Few words in the IT and telecoms channel are used as often — or as loosely — as IoT.
It appears on every roadmap and product sheet, yet its meaning shifts depending on who you ask.
For some, it’s a sensor network. For others, a router estate. And for many, IoT is simply shorthand for selling SIMs.
That confusion isn’t new; it’s how the channel first learned to sell IoT — through the piece it could own first: connectivity.
Over time, the word followed that networking focus until IoT came to mean almost anything that connects via a SIM, even when that definition didn’t quite fit.
But IoT isn’t the SIM. Or the router. Or even the data plan. It’s the whole ecosystem, linking devices, platforms, and data to deliver outcomes.
IoT connectivity (whether SIM, eSIM, satellite link etc.) powers that system, but it doesn’t define IoT, any more than a cable defines a fixed line.
The shorthand helped IoT take root in the channel. But today, it’s blurring where partners really create value — and where the next phase of growth will come from.
The shift didn’t happen by accident. It’s how the channel naturally evolves: adapt fast, fill gaps, and monetise what’s tangible first.
When IoT first entered the conversation, it came wrapped in visions of smart cities, predictive analytics, and industrial transformation — ambitions that sat far outside most resellers’ reach.
Back then, most of the market still called it M2M **— machine-to-machine connectivity — long before the broader “IoT” label took hold. And early adoption wasn’t glamorous; it came through practical use cases like fleet tracking.
Resellers couldn’t suddenly build sensors, platforms, or analytics, but they could extend what they already knew: delivering connectivity.
Cellular IoT connectivity became the natural starting point — SIMs, data plans, and managed services that fit existing systems and billing models.
It was the simplest, most scalable way to “do IoT” without re-engineering the whole business.
So IoT entered the channel through connectivity: the layer resellers could touch, sell, and control. And gradually, IoT in the channel began to mean that layer.
From the start, the distinction between IoT connectivity and business connectivity was hazy.
The same cellular IoT stack — multi-network SIMs, private APNs, pooled data — could serve a 4G backup router as easily as a fleet of smart meters.
Operationally, the overlap makes sense. Linguistically, it causes chaos.
Over time, the market has stopped drawing the line between enabling IoT and delivering uptime. Both uses of cellular IoT connectivity have become “IoT” — one selling resilience, the other selling insight.
Then marketing made the blurring worse.
As the market for cellular IoT expanded, network operators and aggregators wanted to make a complex technology easier to sell — especially to resellers and customers used to broadband and mobile.
So they dropped language like cellular and IoT, and borrowed from “mobile data” instead: smart mobile, intelligent data, managed 4G.
It sounded modern yet familiar, bridging the gap between mobile and IoT without needing to explain the ins and outs.
But the trade-off was precision.
In simplifying IoT to sound like mobile, the market blurred the line between consumer-style connectivity and managed, solution-fit infrastructure — making it easier to sell in the short term, but harder to differentiate in the long term.
Sales teams found themselves spending more time explaining what it wasn’t than what it was.
The simplification helped adoption but hollowed out meaning — turning cellular IoT connectivity into “just another data SIM,” when in reality it’s business-grade infrastructure built for resilience, orchestration, and control.
While vendors simplified terminology downward, resellers were repurposing the same technology upward.
As fixed-line margins shrank, 2G and 3G networks began sunsetting, and fibre installs lagged, customers needed connectivity that could launch instantly and flex across sites.
So smart resellers took the same cellular IoT technology that powered IoT devices and used it to solve very real infrastructure challenges — backup, pre-ethernet, rapid deployment.
Many branded these propositions under the IoT banner: it sounded future-ready, even if the offer was more about business continuity than IoT solutions.
That mismatch stuck. But for many buyers, “IoT” usually means an end-to-end partner: hardware, platforms, analytics — the works.
So when cellular backup is presented as an IoT solution, or within it’s vicinity, expectations diverge fast. Customers expect transformation; they’re getting continuity.
One delivers outcomes, the other uptime — but if they share the same label, everyone ends up negotiating price instead of fit.
All this stems from one simple reality: The same cellular IoT technology serves two very different purposes.
Both rely on the same foundation, but one sells resilience; the other sells intelligence.
And when both are called “IoT,” the value story and revenue strategy collapses into one.
With 2G and 3G sunsetting, LPWAN networks expanding, and enterprises demanding end-to-end visibility, precision in how we describe and deliver IoT and cellular IoT connectivity has never mattered more.
When partners separate business connectivity, IoT connectivity, and IoT solutions, everything gets sharper:
Clarity isn’t just linguistic — it’s commercial because each layer carries different margins, risks, and routes to market.
When language blurs them, so do go-to-market strategies.
But when each layer is priced, marketed, and supported correctly, partners compete on value — not volume — and protect their margins as the market matures.
This clarity reveals the real structure of the market — and three natural growth paths, all powered by the same cellular IoT connectivity backbone the channel already owns.
In all three routes, cellular IoT connectivity is the foundation — not the definition — of IoT.
And partners who position, push, and pull that foundation clearly for its context will stop selling buzzwords and start building real value: resilience, intelligence, and control.
A simple structure like this shows how cellular fits naturally within a wider connectivity portfolio:
Business Internet / connectivity
Get and stay online: your core business access and uptime.
Here, Backup, Pre-Ethernet, and Rapid Deployment sit under Business Internet because the outcome is uptime, regardless of access type. Cellular IoT powers these services, but the technology supports the offer — it doesn’t define it. The buyer’s intent isn’t “IoT.”
Cellular IoT Connectivity
Connect devices: the connectivity that powers and manages IoT systems.
This layer focuses on connecting IoT devices. It’s where cellular moves from keeping businesses online to enabling connected systems.
Some offers, like our Smart Connect, can appear in both Business Internet and Cellular IoT Connectivity layers. Used for rapid site launches, it sits under Business Internet; used to connect IoT devices or systems, it fits naturally under Cellular IoT Connectivity. The distinction isn’t the hardware — it’s the intent. The same SKU can live in two stories depending on need.
IoT Solutions / Smart Solutions
Optimise operations — end-to-end services combining connectivity, devices, and data.
These are full IoT solutions that make use of the Cellular IoT Connectivity layer.
This structure helps show where value sits: uptime under Business Internet, device control under Cellular IoT Connectivity, and transformation under IoT Solutions. Each layer builds from the same cellular foundation, but speaks to a different buyer and outcome.
_white.svg)
