The coming year is set to see a dramatic increase in the impact of regulation on IoT, according to Transforma Insights.

Its Transition Topics covers areas and evolutions that will shape the IoT landscape in 2024. Top of the list are regulations around security, permanent roaming, data sovereignty, national resilience and data management, such as the EU Data Act and NIS2. These create much greater considerations on compliance, and the architectures and processes that support it.

Following on from considerations of regulation, and often triggered by it, Transforma expects a considerable emphasis in 2024 on how IoT data might be handled. The EU in particular has created some significant initiatives around data spaces, portability and related areas, and there has been the emergence of data infrastructure models such as Gaia-X and Catena-X.

The IoT application enablement platform (AEP) space has undergone a transformation in recent years. Just a few years ago, mega-vendors were immersed in IoT with the aim of providing a universal, infinitely scalable IoT platform. Today many have opted out of the space. This is a market that should be much more focused on vertical-specific contextualisation and the services around the AEP, rather than simply being focused on being the best platform.

Suppliers in the IoT space, particularly in connectivity, are becoming increasingly aware that a purely horizontal approach is not sustainable. They need to identify particular verticals on which to focus their attention. To do that effectively they need to conduct a robust market segmentation and identify which verticals and applications will be their prime targets. This segmentation approach goes hand-in-hand with considerations of marketing strategies, and channel and partner programmes.

A subset of considerations of vertical segmentation is finding ways to build credibility for a particular vertical based on an ostensibly horizontal offering, allowing for scalable differentiation. Transforma terms this ‘contextualisation’, that is rendering a horizontal service offering in the context of a client’s specific needs.

The use of video monitoring has witnessed significant improvements, from round-the-clock surveillance for security purposes to object detection, gesture detection, facial recognition and motion tracking across industries to gain real-time business insights and prescriptive analysis. In many cases, video analytics, particularly coupled with AI, represents an alternative to traditional IoT remote sensing and monitoring.

The technology for eSIM and remote SIM provisioning (RSP) have been part of the IoT connectivity landscape for almost a decade, although in reality only commercially viable for a few years. During 2023 a specific IoT SGP.32 standard for remote SIM provisioning was agreed and devices will become available probably around the end of 2024. Transforma expects this to be the dominant form for RSP. The new standard adopts a very different approach to the previous M2M variant and allows for greater flexibility for users to switch connectivity providers. However, commercial models and the likely impact are unclear.

While 2G and 3G switch-offs have been a reality for many countries in the past few years, many have still yet to go through the process.

To an extent, 5G is just another mobile generation. However, it does promise mobile network operators (MNOs) the opportunity to provide enhanced quality of service, reliability and programmability, in addition to its core features of higher bandwidth and lower latency.

The past few years have seen a flurry of activity on satellite IoT services, including the launch of many LEO constellations and the arrival of NTNs (non-terrestrial networks) as part of 3GPP Release 17. Low-cost hardware is becoming increasingly the norm.

With a range of techniques available to end users wanting to deploy their own private networks, ranging from licencing spectrum and deploying a physical network to leasing capacity from an MNO, and the emergence of 5G as an enabler of industrial private networks, the mobile private network (MPN) space is poised for rapid expansion. A key consideration will be how multi-location networks are deployed and managed and how connections can roam between private and public network connectivity.

Until now the world of cellular LPWA has broadly split into LTE-M being used for multi-country deployments with NB-IoT essentially reserved for national deployments. This has posed a challenge for device-OEMs that may operate globally and want to use NB-IoT connectivity. In 2024 Transforma (transformainsights.com) expects that markets for NB-IoT connectivity will evolve so the technology becomes better suited to multi-country deployments.