Battle of the IoT networks: Cellular versus Wi-Fi – IoT Agenda
When it comes to the internet of things, perhaps the key enabling technology is wireless networking technologies. Without the two primary wireless data networking technologies — cellular and Wi-Fi — almost every IoT device would require a wired connection to the internet, dramatically limiting the ability of developers to create IoT applications that deliver value to businesses and consumers.
However, thanks to these two wireless networking technologies, IoT is big and getting bigger — research firm Gartner forecasted that in 2017, 8.4 billion connected things will be in use worldwide, with this number reaching 20.4 billion by 2020. With as many as 10 billion additional connected devices forecast to be deployed over the next three years, IoT application developers face an important question as the market continues to mature — given each technology’s bandwidth, cost, coverage and security characteristics, should they design their IoT applications to use cellular, Wi-Fi or both?