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Raise a glass — a quiet IoT workhorse comes of age

Plus our top IoT stories of the week!

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IoT For All
December 04, 2025

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Hello readers!

This week we’re talking about ZIgbee’s 21st birthday, how software-defined connectivity supercharges IoT ROI, how smart cities are getting smarter, and more!

21 and not nearly done

This month marks 21 years since the ratification of Zigbee 1.0 in December 2004, and one of the earliest and most influential low-power wireless standards in modern IoT deserves a drink. While many early connectivity protocols have either disappeared or been fully absorbed into niche applications, Zigbee has stuck it out, widely deployed across residential, commercial, and industrial environments.

Zigbee make its mark because it solved a constrained-device networking problem at a time when neither Wi-Fi nor Bluetooth were well suited to low-power, low-data-rate sensing. Built on IEEE 802.15.4, Zigbee offered a predictable power-efficient way to form dense networks of devices without requiring expensive radios or heavy infrastructure. Just as important, early Zigbee profiles established one of the first attempts at cross-vendor interoperability in the smart-device world — a concept that would later inspire many of the frameworks used in today’s IoT platforms. This combination of efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and basic interoperability is what allowed Zigbee to anchor early smart-home systems, building-automation solutions, utility metering, and a wide range of sensor networks.

But the early 2010s, however, the standard was showing strain. Zigbee’s growth had produced a proliferation of application profiles — Home Automation, Smart Energy, Light Link, Building Automation, Retail Services, you name it. Each served a different market, but also created an interoperability problem: devices built for one profile often could not communicate meaningfully with devices built for another. Zigbee 3.0, an effort to unify these fragmented profiles under a single application layer and a single certification framework, managed to simplify development, reduce incompatibilities, and created a more coherent ecosystem, saving the standard from itself. It realigned Zigbee around its strengths — reliable mesh networking, low power budgets, and predictable, local control — to give it a second wind.

That unification allowed Zigbee to remain viable even as the smart-home landscape shifted and competition increased. In the consumer space, newer IP-based protocols began to draw more attention, but Zigbee’s role evolved rather than diminished. It became a stable, mature backbone for large installations where long device lifetimes and consistent performance matter more than bleeding-edge features. Over the last decade, improvements have focused on incremental but meaningful updates — stronger security posture, more reliable commissioning flows, and operational enhancements oriented toward large building deployments rather than hobbyist experimentation.

Today, Zigbee occupies a distinct and durable position in the connectivity stack. It is no longer marketed as a universal smart-home protocol and it does not need to be. Instead, it serves as a high-reliability sensing and control layer in commercial buildings, energy systems, healthcare facilities, and campus-scale deployments. These environments value longevity, predictability, and mature tooling — characteristics Zigbee has had time to refine. The rise of multi-radio hubs, universal bridges, and application-layer standards such as Matter further reinforce this direction. Zigbee becomes one subsystem among many, integrated rather than isolated, and increasingly abstracted behind infrastructure that can support multiple protocols simultaneously.

Looking ahead, Zigbee’s next decade will likely resemble its current one: steady, workmanlike, and oriented toward environments that favor proven technologies over constant reinvention. The proliferation of Matter, the momentum behind Thread, and expanded interest in Wi-Fi-based devices will shift consumer attention elsewhere, but the core Zigbee value proposition remains intact. In many facilities, it will continue to be the quiet infrastructure layer powering lighting control, energy management, occupancy sensing, and commercial automation at scale. Twenty-one years after its 1.0 release, Zigbee is no longer the center of the connectivity conversation — but it remains a foundational piece of deployed IoT reality.

📖 Top Articles

In IoT, return on investment (ROI) isn’t just a line item; it’s the North Star of every IoT deployment. Whether you’re launching a new connected product or scaling an existing fleet globally, the cost-to-value ratio determines success. But traditional connectivity models have long been a roadblock to healthy ROI, plagued by high upfront costs, manual labor, and limited flexibility.

Now, enter Software-Defined Connectivity (SDC), a paradigm that doesn’t just improve ROI at one point in the lifecycle.

Largely due to the growth of IoT and AI/ML, medical devices have become increasingly software-driven and interconnected over the past decade. Innovative technology brings opportunities to redefine the medical device and healthcare industries: from simple health-focused wearables to sophisticated AI-powered diagnostic systems. Cloud connectivity, remote patient monitoring, and real-time data analytics are now standard features in smart medical devices rather than competitive differentiators.

The momentum behind smart city initiatives is undeniable. This year's Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona doubled in size and mirrored trends at major shows like CES, which now dedicates entire areas to smart city innovation. Beyond the growing exhibition floors and enthusiastic crowds, something more significant is happening: cities worldwide are quietly getting smarter, deploying real solutions to address mounting urban pressures and climate challenges.

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🔥 Rapid Fire

🎙️ The IoT For All Podcast

In this episode of the IoT For All Podcast, Maor Efrati, co-founder and CTO of Monogoto, joins Ryan Chacon to discuss hybrid connectivity in IoT. The conversation covers why hybrid connectivity matters, the evolving landscape of IoT connectivity, the importance of edge AI and LPWAN, the critical role of built-in security in IoT solutions, the need for market education to dispel misconceptions about IoT connectivity, the impact of SIM virtualization on device management, hybrid connectivity with GEO and LEO satellies, and the future of hybrid connectivity.

📄 White Papers

Policy-Driven Development of Smart Buildings in Europe

Facing stringent climate goals and a vast stock of inefficient buildings, Europe's renovation market is rapidly expanding, propelled by powerful EU policies like the Renovation Wave. Smart technologies, particularly IoT sensors and building management systems, are becoming essential to achieve deep energy savings and transform aging structures into sustainable, intelligent assets.