Industry Expert Blogs

When most of us think about widespread technology adoption we have a pronounced urban bias. Tech growth pitches around 5G are based on emerging application in western cities and progressive adoption in developing countries though still in urban areas. Beyond that, most pitches gets a bit fuzzy. On-the-ground IoT applications are clear – soil humidity and temperature for example – but how these communicate with a datacenter is less clear.

Line of sight 5G base stations are available only where there is enough demand (generally a nearby town) to justify the cost of a base station. And even then, only in relative clear areas; forested or mountainous regions, oceans or deserts need not apply. Mesh networks and fixed wireless access can expand the reach to IoT devices a little around a base station but still under the same restrictions. In contrast, LEO satellite (low earth orbit) options like Starlink are visible everywhere they are deployed but depend on proprietary protocols and hardware link support. It is not surprising then that there is growing appetite for standards-based 5G LEO satellite cellular to truly open up this market.

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