[4] NB-IoT focuses specifically on indoor coverage, low cost, long battery life, and high connection density.
[5][6][7][8][9] IoT applications which require more frequent communications will be better served by LTE-M, which has no duty cycle limitations operating on the licensed spectrum.
In April 2019, GSA identified 210 devices supporting either Cat-NB1/NB-2 or Cat-M1 – more than double the number in its GAMBoD database at the end of March 2018.
[19] Since 2021, there also is a cheap all-in-one NB-IoT solution available to the general public developed by the Chinese manufacturer Ai-Thinker.
[20] At the beginning of 2023 the Belgian company DPTechnics released the Walter IoT board which combines an ESP32-S3 together with a Sequans Monarch 2 NB-IoT/LTE-M platform.