As 2022 rumbles on, there are several new trends in LPWA (low power wan) communication. The most important trend or issue, unfortunately, is the electronics supply chain hassle. There’s a nightmare with delays, price increases and general slowdown in the mass deployment of LowPower based solutions which increased significantly at the start of 2022.

But there are also positive trends in the air. A trend of long term prepaid SIM cards is changing the industry. MNOs (Mobile network operators) have been trying to establish plans that bring long term value. Prepaid plans allow for this value without troublesome contracts. Today, a 10 years prepaid LowPower WAN card allows connection of NB-IoT or LTE-M based devices for less than €3 per year. The prepaid approach is a win-win for both mobile operators and customers. Imagine your device sending easily accessible data for the whole year at the price of one cup of espresso!

In fact, customers can benefit even more. For example, a €2.59 plan includes not only connection but also integration with multifunctional middleware that allows implementation of mass scale Low Power use cases. It’s essentially a plug and play solution for whatever software you want to attach to the IoT devices. Saves time, saves money, and gives better results.

And the last important trend which I would like to mention is the increasing coverage of 5G Low Power networks. 45 Countries including the USA, UK, most of the European countries and also Australia have managed to establish this new radio technology on a wide scale. We’ll have loads more to discuss regarding this upgrade in technology soon!

If you're interested in getting set up with an IoT project, get in touch with us - We at Miotiq pride ourselves on being experts in low power IoT since 2016. And well, since we're talking about coffee, we're happy to discuss IoT over a coffee too!