Ericsson Mobility Report finds 1bn legacy IoT devices still alive in 2025

Ericsson has released its latest Mobility Report (formerly the Mobility Index), finding that while Cellular IoT connections will reach 5bn units in 2025, some 1bn of those are going to be legacy 2G and 3G links, with around 1.4bn being 4G and 5G. The Massive IoT section, which is the LTE Cat-M and Cat-NB, is counted separately from the 4G part, and will constitute around 2.6bn units in 2025 (52% of all C-IoT). This puts non-cellular IoT devices on around 400mn units, by Ericsson’s count. It seems somewhat mad that in 2025, the number of deployed Legacy devices still sits at 1bn. Given the MNO desire to refarm that valuable spectrum into LTE and 5G, 1bn Cellular-IoT devices still stuck…