In the near future with 5G, mobile operators will continue to provide secure connectivity and high value services, enabling a complete range of IoT solutions for consumers and businesses. Mobile IoT technologies, NB-IoT and LTE-M, deliver trusted and cost effective low power wide area (LPWA) capability today, while forming the foundation of the 5G future and supporting IoT growth on a massive scale.

This paper explains how NB-IoT and LTE-M technologies are an integral part of 5G. It also highlights that both NB-IoT and LTE-M will continue to serve LPWA 5G use cases, and will coexist alongside other components of 5G which meet the other various 5G use cases. Detailed technical aspects of 5G, NB-IoT and LTE-M are out of scope of this paper.