Hello readers!

This week, we’re talking about the next big sunset, sustainability priorities that will shape IoT, and more!

Cellular networks have a lifespan, and the products built on them rarely plan around it. The 2G and 3G shutdowns showed how that plays out. Netmore's account, drawing on 2019 survey data, put 53.1% of the 125 million cellular IoT devices then deployed on 2G or 3G, and 47% of businesses said their providers hadn't told them a shutdown was coming. Some applications could get by with software updates. Many needed new hardware. The devices involved were mostly low-bandwidth, with three-quarters using under a megabyte a month, so the pain, though real, landed on fleets of modest endpoints. The next retirement lands somewhere else. Operators are expected to start switching off LTE from 2030, and LTE is the generation most of those fleets migrated to. The products riding it are bigger, pricier and expected to last longer.

Vehicles are the clearest case. Omdia forecasts the global connected vehicle base will grow from 473.7 million in 2025 to more than 1.05 billion by 2035, a compound annual rate of 8.3%. Its latest research also warns that an LTE shutdown would hit automakers harder than the 2G and 3G transitions did, because LTE sits under EV routing, over-the-air software updates, driver assistance and real-time safety services. John Canali, Omdia's principal analyst for IoT, points to slow 5G adoption and describes the worst case as vehicles that depend on a connection with no viable network to attach to. Every car sold in the next few years with an LTE-only modem is a bet that the modem will outlast the network. A car sold today will very likely still be on the road in 2030.

The earlier sunsets came with a known remedy. A technician swaps the SIM or module, and Twilio's account of the cost puts each of those truck rolls at $150 to more than $1,000. Across hundreds of thousands of devices that is punishing, but it is a bounded, schedulable line item. Vehicles complicate it. What rides on the connection is worth more than telemetry: Omdia points to recurring-revenue features and safety-critical services, with tighter SLAs attached. The party that chose the modem years earlier is also the one on the hook for keeping those promises. Omdia's recommendation is that automakers align product planning, SLA frameworks and upgrade paths with operator timelines, which means the plan has to exist before the shutdown date arrives.

The tooling that came out of the last cycle helps, though only part of the way. eSIM lets a device hold several carrier profiles and switch between them over the air, which is why Twilio's guide advised upgrading to eSIM and a multi-IMSI profile whenever a modem upgrade was already forcing a truck roll. That solves the carrier problem. It leaves the radio problem alone: a profile can move a device from one operator to another, but it can't teach an LTE-only modem a technology it doesn't contain. The same guide called a 4G LTE modem a safe bet for IoT builders, a sound call in 2024 that now has an end date attached. Monogoto's list of common deployment mistakes turns this into a design rule. An industrial device's ten-year life spans several network generations, so a device shipped on NB-IoT or LTE-M today will outlive the current 5G standalone roadmap. The fix is multi-mode hardware plus the ability to change band and technology preferences remotely, without a firmware change.

Start with an inventory by modem type, since that is how Omdia cuts the vehicle base and it is the cut that reveals exposure. For each product line, write down which radio technologies the hardware supports, which network date it depends on, and what the device does when it can no longer attach. Then look at the update path. Portainer's guide to edge fleet software puts OTA infrastructure first, because without it nothing you discover can be remediated, and the EU's Cyber Resilience Act already pushes manufacturers toward that capability, with its core requirements enforceable from December 2027. The pipeline that ships a security patch is the same one that reconfigures a modem. For anything with a service life that reaches past 2030, put the network retirement date in the lifecycle plan next to warranty and end-of-support, and make the next hardware revision multi-mode.

IoT can only claim sustainability gains if connected devices are designed for long life, secure operation, lower operational friction, and credible end-of-life recovery.

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In this episode of the IoT For All Podcast, Yanshi Tao, VP of Public Safety & Vision Systems at Jabil, joins Ryan Chacon to discuss the future of AI-powered public safety. The conversation covers the shift from surveillance to intelligence, what makes AI-powered public safety possible, automated decision-making, flock cameras, balancing security and privacy, and the technical challenges of AI solutions.

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