The number of IoT connected “things” is expected to grow dramatically over the next few years, with estimates ranging as high as 50 billion connected devices by 2020. Indeed, this has caused somewhat of a stampede to try to offer broadband connectivity options to attach all of these devices to the cloud.

Current networks supporting 4G/LTE offer connectivity but at a price that most IoT things can’t afford. Its not only a connection cost issue, but also one of power requirements (standard LTE modems are relatively power hungry), and size (many LTE modem chips are quite large given the size of many of the IoT devices). And most IoT devices need relatively low speed and low amounts of data transmission requirements, which are not the design center for modern LTE networks. So alternatives to standard wireless broadband networks are needed.

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