Vodafone’s standalone IoT business is doubling down on global reach, platform consistency, and SIM innovation – to dominate an evolving and fragmented cellular IoT market.
Strategic spin-out – Vodafone IoT explains its new independent flex in the global IoT market in terms of scale and speed, agility – in time for the eSIM/iSIM revolution.
Original proposition – Vodafone IoT is pushing its GDSP platform as the gold standard for enterprise IoT orchestration, as a wrapper on a proposition MVNOs cannot touch.
Local optimisation – Vodafone IoT makes clear its US pitch, for inbound and outbound global accounts (not local contracts), support by local staff across all departments.
Vodafone (IoT) wants to talk about sustainability, in the end. “That is the most exciting element of all of this,” says Erik Kling, president and head of Americas for the UK telco group’s IoT business, responding to a wrap-up question about ‘what’s new’, having spoken at some length already about the makeup of the sector, and his own employer’s role within it. It’s a good tech-for-good story, of course, which should be told. “We are helping to streamline operations; we are cutting energy consumption in supply chains,” he adds.
Vodafone estimates it has enabled its customers to save a cumulative equivalent of 47.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions (tCO2 equivalent; 47.6 million tonnes CO2e) since 2020; it has “enabled the avoidance” of 32.8 million tCO2 in the “last year” alone, says Kling. Which is an astonishing rate of acceleration – and about “75 times the emissions” from its own operations. He points to external IoT mechanisms like “real-time” tracking and monitoring (as per topical comms about water conservation) and internal net-zero targets “to be completely green in 2030”.
There is more in Vodafone Group’s carbon reduction plan, published last week. RCR Wireless will take another look, time permitting; but the message, even here, rather underlines the other confusion, which the preceding discussion with Kling has sought to clarify – about which of its technologies, sold via which of its businesses, are delivering such environmental returns and business gains. Because Vodafone’s IoT unit was split from the mothership more than 12 months ago (April 2024), and yet the sales structure, at least, is still a little hard to grasp (for RCR, anyway).
So can we just address that, quickly – Vodafone Group, Vodafone UK, Vodafone Business, Vodafone IoT, and how these businesses work together and apart? And also: how Vodafone IoT even works in the US without infrastructure of its own, where rival firms have tied-up most of the old M2M sector? (The green IoT story will have to wait.) Kling says: “We are a separate entity, which is still 100-percent owned by Vodafone Group – that part has not changed. We spun IoT out for several reasons: number one is for scale, number two is for scope, and number three is for speed.”
He goes on: “It was also to invest further into this. Because when you look at platform development and global reach, you need further investment. And we did this also because of all the eSIM and iSIM development, which changes the dynamics for both existing and new customers around the world.”
The last comment is a telling one about the shifting power dynamics in the IoT market – that the pursuit of flexibility and scale, partly enabled by the new SGP.32 eSIM framework, prompted arguably the biggest name in cellular IoT to reorganise itself completely.
But just to finish this structural talk; Kling explains Vodafone IoT, wherever it is based, goes mob-handed with local group business divisions and operator companies to respond to enterprise RFPs, as required. He says: “We work closely together. I have a [US] team dedicated just to Vodafone Business; we respond together. We are one account team [with customers], as well. The same with the operating companies around the globe; we work together to deliver services, contracts, and everything else for Vodafone Business customers. That hasn’t changed.”
In other words, Vodafone Business remains the master integrator for the UK firm’s global enterprise proposition, recruiting Vodafone IoT to pull together the IoT elements, as required, and local operator units to plug in local airtime, or else to dovetail on group roaming agreements. But Vodafone IoT has the freedom, as well, to pursue business on its own terms, presumably, and the new flexibility, crucially, to work within the fragmented ecosystem to combine bespoke hardware and software into large-scale IoT deployments, attached to a global SIM proposition.
Something like that, anyway; a view of the US setup helps. Kling was the company’s first IoT recruit in the US, 15 years ago, having worked in the (pre-iPhone) smartphone market, and in the (pre-IoT) M2M module market before. “I was employee number-one,” he says. “And our mission has never changed: to take US-headquartered accounts global. Back in the day, the core proposition was ‘one SIM, one platform, one service’ – on 760 networks, in 180 countries. That was the case in 2010, and it is the case now, in 2025 – and it is unmatched in the global IoT space.”
The depth and scale of its reach is the thing, he says. Vodafone might not have a network in the US, but it is selling outbound IoT solutions with inbound IoT support – “commercial, financial, technical; solution architects, any kind of sales support”, he says. “No one relies on a 1-800 global support number; everyone is in the country.” Its biggest US-based clients are all from old M2M sectors: automotive, healthcare, industrial, and mostly geared around tracking and telematics, with enough entrenched scale and regulatory red tape to seek out a Vodafone-sized supplier.
The point here, as well, is that Vodafone IoT delivers wide-area tracking and monitoring on public networks in global markets, and Vodafone Business delivers local-area tracking and monitoring on private networks in regional markets; sometimes they cross over, and sometimes Vodafone IoT is recruited for campus-style IoT, as well – for production lines and machinery, and such. But it is the difference between IoT-for-industry and industrial-IoT, effectively. Kling says of the US firm’s IoT remit: “It could be tracking, it could be HVAC; it all goes together as (IoT for industry).”
So is Vodafone IoT in the US delivering IoT solutions in-market, as well – to for the US-based operations of US-based firms, as well as for their international footprints? Kling responds: “There are different ways. It could be that a company wants Vodafone to deploy all of their global services, no matter where – and that the US is part of it. Most likely they choose Vodafone [IoT US] if that [global] portion is at least 50 percent. But that has changed over time, because we have strong partners across North, Central, Latin America. So you could see a domestic portion of it, up to a point where it makes sense. But we are not really competing domestically. That’s not our sweet spot.”
He segments IoT into three business types: as inbound, outbound, and domestic traffic. Vodafone IoT US / US plays point for the first type, as well, he says. “We are working to bring European, South African, Indian, Australian accounts into the US, as well – because they’re already with Vodafone in these regions, and it’s a natural expansion. They don’t want a second platform, a second contract, a second infrastructure. It’s just easier to work with the US team. So those are the two sweet spots – outbound and inbound. The domestic portion is not in our core strategy.”
He adds: “There isn’t a role in the domestic IoT market in the US for energy metering, things like that. We have no core value proposition to go after those kinds of verticals in the US. If you have a global moving application, like asset tracking, container tracking, which moves around the globe and at some point comes into the US, and then leaves the US again, that’s a different story.” So what about Landis+Gyr supplying a smart meter into the US market with a Vodafone SIM? “That is global-inbound business; a European-headquartered account in the global market.”
Right; and why would a US-headquartered business not hand its global outbound IoT footprint to AT&T, say – a US company with a proper profile in global M2M telematics, probably already supplying it with local SIMs for laptops and staff? Kling cites its original one-platform IoT proposition, as above – specifically its cloud-based GDSP (Global Data Service Platform) management platform. He says: “It comes back to that. We have scaled it over 15 years, and never changed it. We have been very consistent. We provide the scale, scope, features; it is unmatched in the market.”
Which is quite a claim, given the radical disruption around global IoT airtime provision in recent years. Kling traces this “movement on the platform side” back a decade-and-half, and presents the Vodafone counter-narrative about stability, reliability, longevity. “IoT is not just a nice-to-have anymore, but a need-to-have – in automotive, healthcare, logistics. If the IoT environment stops working, then planes don’t take off, ships don’t leave the port. And global enterprises want a partner they have confidence in – that this partner will deliver the services they are expecting.”
He adds: “That was our whole point from the very beginning.”
But this power play in IoT airtime provision is ramping-up. A new breed of global virtual network operator (MVNO) has emerged, in recent years, with nimbler cloud-based setups, globally available and locally compliant, which claim to be able to outmaneuver big regional carriers (MNOs) – to the point some MNOs are even investing in MVNOs, and putting global IoT sales their way. Meanwhile, others have reimagined the old MVNO enabler (MVNE) proposition as a nuts-and-bolts global MNO-enablement proposition, to support certain of Vodafone’s peers in the global market.
Kling says: “Yes, we are aware, and we need to be aware. There are pros and cons, and differences. An MVNO could never have the access we have; we own a lot of networks around the globe, which is an advantage nobody else has. MVNOs will never have the scale – of Vodafone Germany, Vodafone UK, Vodafone South Africa, Vodafone you-name-it. That is just unattainable. Some MVNOs are deploying global infrastructure in a smart way, but some are struggling as well. It comes back to the core value proposition – [of global] access and [local] support.
“If a customer only operates in one country or region, then it has different requirements, and the competitive landscape is different as well. It is really all about the customer’s needs and the regional scope. But if you want to be a global market leader in the IoT space, it is about that core proposition – one SIM, one infrastructure, one platform – which [we have made] very agile through our new setup, so have faster decision making, and everything is in-house, inside Vodafone IoT. Nobody else has that environment – I would say.” We are back to the start, again.
And what about this parallel eSIM narrative, where the new SGP.32 switching mechanic shifts the IoT power dynamic further away from the original MNO brigade – or from IoT airtime providers, of all sorts? “We embrace it. You have no choice but to embrace it. It is a natural evolution, which makes IoT easier and better for customers. And Vodafone is all about the standards, of course; we are working on the frontline with all standards.… We should be ready with SGP.32 by the end of this year. We are working in the background… We have the infrastructure and the ecosystem partners to be ready in time.”
(Just as context, SGP.32-based eSIM devices and platforms are being tested for interoperability, currently, and will start to emerge through the end of 2025, and find proper commercial scale through 2026. Analyst house Kaleido Intelligence expects a tipping point in 2027/28, when over 50 percent of new IoT connections will use an eSIM – and newly-issued SGP.32 IoT profiles will be “on a level with” M2M SGP.02 profiles. Worth noting: SGP.02 eSIMs have a ‘long tail’ on the grounds that automotive and utility customers are locked into long purchase cycles.)
Does the SGP.3 promise of remote airtime switching, handing the initiative to the customer, put a higher premium on service? Or is the threat of churn overplayed? “It is about the balance, right? Especially in this industry, which is always dealing with change – with 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G, now 6G, and all the different flavours of IoT; and with the global diversity in all of that, where 2G and 3G are gone in the US, say, and where it is different in Europe or Asia. For customers, it’s like, ‘Ugh, what do I do?’ What product strategy makes sense around the world?
“And so it is good to have a partner that knows the roadmap and has the vision, the contacts, the network access. Which can provide a consultancy service… We have adapted to all these technology and network changes early. Which is why we don’t see much danger that customers will suddenly say, ‘Hey, I can get a better deal over here’. Because that is not the value proposition. When you go with Vodafone, you have the largest partner for IoT in the world, and we are hyper-scaling connectivity for critical IoT services.”
Time to wrap up; we will talk with Vodafone about sustainability with IoT another time.
