The cellular internet of things (IoT) market will be worth $61 billion globally by 2026, up from a predicted $31 billion this year.

That’s according to research from UK analyst house Juniper Research, which identifies the growth of 5G and cellular low-power wide area (LPWA) technologies as key to this 95 percent increase in value.

The firm’s report, Cellular IoT: Strategies, Opportunities, and Market Forecasts 2022-26 predicts that LPWA flavours such as NB-IoT and LTE-M will be the fastest-growing cellular IoT technologies in this timeframe.

The low cost of connectivity and hardware will drive adoption for remote monitoring in key verticals, such as agriculture, smart cities, and manufacturing.

LPWA connections are expected to grow 1,200% over the next four years, so Juniper urges immediate support for the technology.

“Operators must migrate IoT connections on legacy networks to networks that support LPWA technologies. Demand from enterprises for low-cost monitoring technologies, enabled by LPWA networks, will increase as these legacy networks are shut off over the next four years.”

However, the authors add: “Many IoT networks cannot solely rely on LPWA technologies. More comprehensive technologies, such as 5G, must underpin IoT network architectures and work in tandem with LPWA technologies to maximise the value of IoT services.”

The report predicts that 5G IoT services alone will generate revenues of $9 billion by 2026, rising from $800 million last year. This represents growth of more than 1,000% over five years as 5G coverage expands and operators benefit from 5G IoT connections.

Juniper recommends that operators offer value-added services such as network slicing and edge computing to IoT users to maximise the value of 5G adoption.

Processing data at the edge will be essential to time-critical functions and services, especially in remote environments where cloud connectivity may be patchy or slow. This will benefit industries such as agriculture.

“By processing data at the edge of a network, typically through an edge gateway, it can differentiate between what needs to be actioned in real-time and which can be sent on to data centres.

“The obvious benefits include greater ability to analyse time-critical data and act accordingly, lower bandwidth needs and cost, and improved latency, which is particularly crucial to delay-intolerant applications.”

Large-scale industrial settings are among those that will be dependent on reliable, ultra-low latency connections.

Other cellular IoT opportunities include embedding eSIMs into a broad range of devices, adds the report.

• In related news, statistics from communications platform provider BICS show that machine roaming on its network rose 44 percent year on year in 2021, representing what it calls a “huge upsurge” in IoT connectivity.

The research also revealed a 65 percent average monthly increase in machines using satellite connectivity in North America.