NB-IoT declared dead, what now?

An Article by Raimo Järvenpää, Chief Product Officer, Simplex Wireless.

We’ve covered NB- IoT, LTE-M, NR RedCap, LTE and LTE CAT-1.bis as technology and positioning in various blogs and articles before. We’ve eluded towards certain trends and expectations on how the future looks from Radio Access Technology deployment roadmap perspective. Our vision was underlined last week when one of the major US MNO’s AT&T announced stopping sales and retiring NB-IoT as a Radio Access Technology at a quick pace https://www.rcrwireless.com/20241120/internet-of-things-4/att-quits-nb-iot

To summarize we’ve seen and expected NB-IoT deployments being undermined by the deployments of LTE-M and furthermore eventually replaced fully by NR RedCap and LTE CAT-1.bis.

Round one won by LTE-M against NB-IoT

There are several reasons for this one of the major contributors has been the network technology complexity vs payload leading to different service pricing models, that have not been matching the mainstream IoT use- and business cases. There definitely are still perfect marriages as well in the local markets for various battery-operated sensor use cases and as well in co-existence with Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN). Looking from the global perspective the service pricing models being different that has as one consequence led to less service roaming agreement. Thus, the obvious feature benefits of NB-IoT being power save and less complex device aspects, have been diluted with service cost elements and more restricted service availability. If network complexity is the deciding factor for MNO deployment decision, then it clearly prefers LTE-M and LTE CAT-1.bis as they basically are subset of the LTE deployments being easier to manage and maintain.

Round two, a new challenger arrives

Next contender on the block is LTE CAT-1.bis. This is not a fight per se, but siblings finding their space in the family hierarchy and building on their individual strengths.

• LTE CAT-1.bis has the advantage over LTE-M as most of the existing global LTE CAT-1 deployments are compatible with LTE CAT-1.bis. Also LTE CAT-1.bis roaming is and is expect to be wider as there are no explicit IoT roaming agreements to be made for it. It typically follows consumer cell phone roaming coverage agreements.
• LTE CAT-1.bis is 10x faster and having lower latency than LTE-M, so higher bandwidth and lower latency enables more use cases for LTE CAT-1.bis
• LTE-M is better on the idle power saving, but the situation changes with data transmission as the transmission ‘ON time’ is longer, naturally due to lower bandwidth and throughput. For example, transmitting 500B takes 5x longer with LTE-M (40ms) vs. LTE CAT-1.bis (8ms), so the use case makes a big difference for the overall power consumption.  But LTE-M with power save features would take this one home.
• as LTE cat-1.bis devices have single antenna design like LTE.M and as LTE-M being slightly more complex than LTE cat1.bis, that should bring the cost advantage to LTE CAT-1.bis
• LTE-M devices experience better coverage due to inbuilt packet repetition, so it’s designed for challenging RF conditions. LTE CAT-1.bis devices capture more cells/towers as it has a wider bandwidth, so cell-based location accuracy can be better. Which also benefits the mobility of the devices. So, the use cases like fixed installation of a meter in a basement would suggest LTE-M while use cases like mobile tracker would suggest LTE CAT-1.bis

Where to go in real 5G?

NR (5G New Radio) RedCap though differs from the stance that it bridges the gap between LPWA and WBWA networks bringing the higher speeds and lower latency in a cost and complexity effective package. So, NR RedCap will be a LTE lower category class replacement.  It will be slightly more complex from network perspective. It will be up to the module OEM’s device pricing, and MNO service deployments and pricing that will show what range of use – and business cases it will be able to cover. The future NR RedCap releases will include power save features using the latest 5G enablers that should be able to address feature gap NB-IoT will be leaving.

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This article was written by Raimo Järvenpää, Chief Product Officer, Simplex Wireless.

About the Author; Raimo Järvenpää has over 30 years of experience in cellular radio technologies working with Nokia and other big-name companies. He has the experience from 1 G forward seeing how the evolution of Cellular Technology has moved over the decades. In his personal life Raimo is active in orienteering, skiing and in the Finnish Sauna culture.