Satellite IoT Enters 2026 with New NB-NTN Service Propositions from Viasat, Skylo, and Iridium…Competition Will Ratchet Up

Growth in the satellite Internet of Things (IoT) sector is picking up pace, and that momentum appears to be driven by a keen interest in adopting a standards-based approach. Historically, satellite IoT has the overwhelming preserve of proprietary communications systems. To give them due credit, many of these systems were pioneers in the air/maritime/land mobile satellite communications sector—Inmarsat, Viasat, and Globalstar. However, as the years count down to the anticipated 6G convergence milestone of 2030, there is growing interest in The 3rd Generation Partnership Project’s (3GPP) Narrowband Non-Terrestrial Network (NB-NTN) standard. Notable recent developments include:

• July 2025: Viasat's IoT Nano was developed in partnership with ORBCOMM and utilizes ORBCOMM's OGx satellite IoT platform, which enables two-way messaging for monitoring, as well as command and control of remote assets. ORBCOMM's upgraded data throughput allows messages/instructions from just 10 bytes to 1 Megabytes (MB), as well as faster delivery (< 15 seconds for small messages). Terminal battery life can operate for multiple years.
• January 2026: Skylo Technologies and Vodafone IoT have announced a partnership to deliver NB-NTN satellite connectivity to customers in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. The service utilizes Skylo’s Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) satellite constellation, which can be accessed by enterprises and consumers in 36 countries via a single Vodafone Subscriber Identity Module (SIM). Small, periodic data packets can be transmitted, with peak throughput at 1–2 Kilobits per Second (Kbps), and an end-to-end latency of 5–10 seconds.
• January 2026: Iridium announced the launch of its “Iridium NTN Direct” service. In December 2023, Qualcomm and Iridium canceled their "Snapdragon Satellite” satellite communications initiative due to a lack of traction from the device and terminal vendor community. Iridium has since pivoted investment to the 3GPP NB-NTN standard to leverage the growing IoT chipset and terminal sector. In 2026 alone, Iridium signed up Syniverse and Deutsche Telekom to open up access to markets.

The net result of this market activity has been an upswell of satellite IoT subscriptions. The satellite IoT market in 2025 exceeded ABI Research’s beginning of 2025 year expectations, demonstrating 20.7% Year-over-Year (YoY) growth to reach 13.6 million active connections.

It is not just the increased competition, satellite service, and product development that are stimulating demand, it is also the reduced operational cost of service. Indeed, from ABI Research’s own research, it is clear that Satellite Service Providers (SSPs) are offering discounts for large-volume subscriptions. As a result, adoption in several verticals is priming growth. ABI Research’s Satellite Communications: IoT Deployments & Subscriptions market data (MD-SATCI-103) identifies the top five market verticals for satellite IoT connections in 2025 as:

1. Asset tracking (22.2%)
2. Fleet management (21.1%)
3. Heavy transport vehicles & equipment (20%)
4. Agriculture (15.3%)
5. Condition-based monitoring (7.4%)

The revenue outlook is challenging and very much a “numbers game.” Average revenue per satellite connection ranges from US$2.90 per month (personal outdoor tracking) to US$22.04 per month (smart energy). The overall worldwide monthly Average Revenue per Connection (ARPC) in 2025 was US$12.68, but notably that ARPC had dropped 4.2%. A similar drop (3.8%) is expected in 2026. Some highly specialized satellite IoT applications, such as real-time aviation telemetry tariffs, can be in the thousands of dollars per year, but other less critical, more mass adoption-orientated use cases, can only sustain a much lower ARPC. As a result of this expanding range of government, enterprises and even consumer use cases, ABI Research anticipates the satellite IoT connections market to surpass 28.6 million connections by 2030, with associated service revenue of US$3.1 billion.

Significant developments are taking place in the satellite IoT market. ABI Research acknowledges there is potential for upside growth both for the number of connections and for the intrinsic value of those connections as satellite IoT features and applications are enabled by high data bandwidth, lower latency, greater integration with terrestrial cellular services, and even private cellular networks. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is starting to be integrated into enterprise and telco services. In terrestrial IoT scenarios, AI is being applied to a number of use case scenarios. Satellite communications could potentially leverage a number of insights from the terrestrial telco ecosystem. In the terrestrial telco sphere, AI is being integrated into:

• Industrial Predictive Maintenance: Sensors monitor unusual vibrations or heat generation, and can analyze these patterns to spot "micro-anomalies."
• Smart Healthcare & Remote Patient Monitoring: Sensors can detect a pattern indicative of an impending medical or health and safety situation.
• Smart Farming: AI models can analyze satellite imagery and sensor data to inform the farmer.
• Intelligent Traffic Management: AI could analyze transportation traffic flows and adjust signal timing.

Satellite IoT can be integrated into AI operations, but inter-operability and data bandwidth can be gating factors with proprietary and legacy satellite communications systems. Standards-based NB-NTN is anticipated to grow from 7.8% of total connections in 2025 to 19.5% in 2030, with New Radio (NR)-NTN representing another 3% of the market. The share of NB-NTN and NR-NTN will accelerate between 2030 and 2035. Nonetheless, proprietary connections still stick around as satellite assets in space can have a 5–15-year operational life. Newer satellites being launched are software-defined, but legacy satellites will likely serve out their operational lives. It should be noted that the upgrade cycle could accelerate. Chipset and module vendors, such as Semtech, Nordic Semiconductor, and Quectel, will initially benefit from this transition to standards-based satellite communications, but enterprise businesses and even end users like you and me on the streets/countryside will also benefit. An increasing percentage of smartphones, smartwatches, and personnel trackers are expected to incorporate Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) connectivity into their hardware. If you have a newer Apple Watch or Garmin, the functionality may already be at your fingertips.