The Internet of Things is bringing new players into the wireless ecosystem and creating new opportunities for carriers. While mobile operators see opportunities in asset tracking, mobile health monitoring and industrial IoT, vendors are focusing on the low power, short range connectivity solutions that will be needed to keep billions of things connected. LTE-M, or LTE for machines, represents an opportunity for the base station vendors, and small cell vendors also see promise in IoT. Infrastructure service providers are looking at the possibility that carriers, or new competitors like Sigfox, will deploy new sites to support the ISM band. Telecom software specialists and network architects are focusing on the massive increase in signaling traffic that will result from connecting billions of new devices to wireless IP networks. |