New research by Kaleido Intelligence has found that 5G connections will grow at almost 5 times the rate of the cellular IoT market overall over the next 5 years. The growth rate will increase from 2028, driven by increased adoption of 5G standalone (SA) roaming agreements.
5G SA rollout impacting market
The new report, 5G Markets: MNO & Enterprise Strategies 2025, notes that 5G has several more hurdles to clear before it can start to be a fully viable IoT technology, most particularly roaming; Kaleido anticipates 5G SA roaming finally arriving on the market in 2025, which will boost the market. However, this will not lead to uniform growth; in a recent Kaleido survey on 5G roaming, a quarter of MNOs asked said they have no clear plans for 5G SA roaming, which means that growth will once again slow after an initial surge in 5G IoT use cases.
“Several of 5G’s headline features for the IoT rely on 5G Standalone deployments”, remarked research author James Moar. “The uneven progress here means that LTE remains a common choice for IoT deployments, particularly Cat 1 bis. RedCap is capable of being a 5G equivalent of this, although price concerns will limit it in the short term.”
The historical lack of support for 5G SA roaming means that 5G has been focused on large domestic markets, which will be difficult to shake off. The United States (US) and China accounted for over 80% of 5G IoT connections in 2024, and will retain over half of global 5G IoT connections until after 2030.
Roaming innovation needed
Kaleido believes that while Billing and Charging Evolution (BCE) provides an opportunity for alternative monetisation models to emerge and make the IoT a more appealing prospect for operators, with per-connection charging being a strong favourite among operators for low-data connections. However, the bilateral nature of BCE will make implementation of this system complex, as a BCE hub‑type model has not yet fully emerged.
5G SEPP is still an evolving standard, with necessary hubs for secure roaming agreements not yet in place. This means that securing 5G roaming remains a labour-intensive process to arrange. IPX can be used here to simplify the process, and Kaleido believes that we will see continued use of IPXs as hub providers for 5G traffic, particularly as 5G voice capability starts to be used in public safety contexts. As a result, we expect IPX-directed VoLTE and VoNR traffic to increase by more than 500% over the forecast period, as these players act as SEPP partners for operators.
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