Transforma Insights’ analysts have tracked the rise of the Internet of Things over the last 15 years. Predominantly, IoT devices are equated with for the transfer of (largely non-real-time) data. However, as explored in a recent report ‘Why VoLTE/VoNR is a critical part of an IoT connectivity provider's portfolio’, sponsored by ng-voice, there is a significant proportion of IoT applications that also need to support voice services of various types.
The reality is that ‘voice’ covers a huge diversity of potential scenarios, from two-way communications (such as for doorbells), to emergency crash notifications, to push-to-talk messaging, and many more.
In this blog post we consider the growing requirement for IoT use cases to support voice and the increasing obligations on the part of IoT connectivity providers to implement a scalable VoLTE/VoNR/IMS capability to support it.
We also invite you to learn more in a free Virtual Briefing on the 5th November ‘Why an IoT connectivity portfolio needs a scalable VoLTE/VoNR capability’.
Through a segmentation of Transforma Insights’ highly granular IoT market forecasts we can quantify the volume of IoT connections and revenue that will have a requirement for voice services. The headline figure is that by 2033 almost 20% of IoT devices are in a category of use case that has a requirement for voice support, up from 14% in 2023. The 2024 figure equates to 1.4 billion connections. The proportion of connectivity revenue that is dependent on supporting voice is even greater. By 2033 of the almost USD80 billion global cellular IoT connectivity revenue opportunity, 22% is generated by applications that will need to support voice.
This naturally begs the question: which applications and use cases demand voice? For the purposes of this analysis, cellular IoT applications can be broadly split into two main categories: automotive and non-automotive, reflecting the importance of the auto sector in cellular IoT.
Numerous automotive applications need to support some form of voice service, whether it be for automated emergency call (eCall), roadside assistance, or fleet management dispatch, amongst others.
Collectively, according to Transforma Insights’ IoT Forecast Database, connected vehicles accounts for 33% of cellular-based IoT connections and 46% of cellular connectivity revenue, as of 2023. As such, the requirement for supporting voice within this sub-set of IoT will be a major consideration. Automotive accounts for an even larger proportion of voice requirements: over 60% of that opportunity is accounted for by automotive applications.
Additionally, there is a wide variety of other use cases that also demand support for voice, including intercoms, lone worker safety, connected elevators, and assisted living.
The use cases identified involve a range of approaches and requirement for delivering ‘voice’. What is virtually universal is that most of them need to support what we term native IP voice, i.e. using the established mobile communications standards. Today that equates to Voice-over-LTE (VoLTE), and eventually Voice over New Radio (VoNR) as 5G becomes more pervasive, in conjunction with IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) functionality. There are several reasons for this.
Firstly, many IoT deployments are supporting ‘critical’ applications, which require robust and secure mechanisms for communication. In some cases the technology to be used will even be specified by regulations, as is the case with eCall. Additionally, many applications have a requirement to integrate the voice session with additional information, e.g. video feeds, patient data, or location.
In such circumstances, the use of the main alternative, Over-the-Top (OTT), voice would be inappropriate. OTT voice, of the type seen with, for instance, WhatsApp, is typically less robust and reliable and lacks the ability to integrate voice with data as part of a session.
In the chart below we present the top IoT applications that demand voice services and the characteristics of those applications, including scale (connections and connectivity revenue), criticality and the requirement to enrich the voice session with additional data. In most cases there is a moderate to high demand for resilient connectivity and the ability to integrate voice and data. All this points to the use of VoLTE.
We should note that the momentum behind VoLTE is in part driven by the switch-off of 2G and 3G networks. Prior to this, devices predominantly using 4G connectivity have had the option of Circuit Switched Fall Back (CSFB) whereby a multi-mode device would use 2G/3G networks for the voice call element of the application. With 2G/3G refarming, that option will be increasingly rare.
As noted above, an increasing amount of the IoT connectivity market depends on supporting voice services and specifically VoLTE/VoNR/IMS. As such any IoT connectivity provider will need such functionality within their proposition. The continuing pressure on IoT connectivity prices means that they will specifically need a cost-effective and scalable approach to supporting it.
As part of the report, Transforma Insights noted eleven characteristics of an optimised voice capability for IoT, ranging from being secure and compliant to being flexible in call routing and able to enrich calls with contextual information. IoT connectivity providers should demand that any voice solution they deploy meets these requirements.
Communications Service Providers must give careful consideration to the commercial scalability of the voice technology solution. Few will have millions of dollars spare to invest in over-provisioned functionality. Instead, they will want a minimal up-front commitment and then scale by number of users with proven technology scalability.
If you would like to learn more about the optimum approach to supporting voice services in IoT, you can join our free Virtual Briefing on 5th November 2024: ‘Why an IoT connectivity portfolio needs a scalable VoLTE/VoNR capability’, in which Transforma Insights and ng-voice explain why IoT applications increasingly need to support voice, which technologies are available and appropriate to deliver voice services, and the best way for connectivity providers to implement a scalable capability.
