SIMCom LTE Cat.1 Modules Are Causing a Sensation in the Market

On Oct. 22, 2019, Mr. Wen Ku, spokesperson of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and head of the Information and Communications Development Division said: “China now has 1.257 billion 4G users, accounting for 78.8% of mobile phone users. The penetration rate of 4G is already very high. It is time for 2G and 3G to quit the market. Carriers are encouraged to actively guide users to change their networks, so as to use limited frequency resources and network resources for developing 5G and 4G mobile communication networks, reducing overall costs and improving the operational efficiency of national communication networks.” This means that after the exit of 2G and 3G networks, 4G and 5G networks will take majority functions. A universal opinion is that medium rate (Cat.1, eMTC(cat.m)) between high rate (5G and 4G LTE) and low rate (2G GPRS and NB-IoT) will rise and LTE Cat.1 will boom.

According to the latest research from Counterpoint Research, 50 billion devices will be connected to the Internet and the market size will reach $19 trillion in 2020. Such huge data access is bound to bring about a reform in the IoT market.

However, it shows that currently only 10% of scenarios, such as telemedicine and autopilot, require high-rate connections. 60% scenarios, such as metering and city management, need to transmit only a few dozen bytes a day, so they only need low-rate NB-IOT connections. Therefore, the remaining 30% of the market will be taken by LTE CAT-1 and eMTC. According to a recent research report by the Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA), 102 carriers in 52 countries have deployed or launched Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN) dominated by NB-IoT and LTE-M; among them, 20 carriers use two standards at the same time; more than 140 carriers keep investing in NB-IoT and LTE-M to support future IoT devices and applications.

NB-IoT can fill in the technical blank left by the exit of 2G networks and satisfy the demand for low-rate low-cost transmission. LTE-M can support greater bandwidth and provide a transmission rate up to 1Mbps, far higher than the max upload/download rates of NB-IoT, thereby allowing for more data throughput. As a result, Cat.1 and eMTC can satisfy the markets for voice and medium - and low-rate transmissions. However, compared with Cat.1, eMTC has little chance in China, so Cat.1 will take the 30% of market for medium-rate cellular communication modules.
 
SIMCom has been planning LTE Cat.1 for a long time. SIMCom launched the LTE Cat.1 module SIM7500CE in 2015, accumulated rich experience in Cat.1 products and services in various fields, such as positioning and tracking, low-speed gateways, intelligent monitoring and intelligent payment. Facing the LTE Cat.1 boom, SIMCom has launched a number of LTE Cat.1 modules.

 

 SIM7600G module LTE Cat1 global version all-in-one (New Arrival) 

SIMCom LTE Cat.1 modules can help customers quickly upgrade from 2G / 3G to 4G, while meeting multiple cost demands in application market segments. Compared with NB-IOT and LTE Cat.4, it has a variety of cost advantages. 

1. Network construction

Deployments of global 4G LTE carriers are all based on the minimal 3GPP Release 8 protocol, so SIMCom LTE Cat.1 can seamlessly connect to existing LTE networks, the cost of network coverage is very low.

2. Chip cost

After system optimization, the integration is higher, the hardware architecture of modules is simpler, and the cost of peripheral hardware is lower.

3. Time lag
SIMCom LTE Cat.1 modules are comparable to LTE Cat.4 modules in terms of millisecond time lag in transmission. They also support movement speeds above 100KM/H, while the cost is nearly 30% lower than Cat 4.

The epidemic is almost over. The IoT market is growing fast and the LTE Cat.1 module market will pay dividends. For more information, you are welcomed to contact with us.