Carriers Embrace IoT

Service providers spent 2016 diligently building out Internet of Things (IoT) strategies to offer more strategic services and overcome the declining demand for their legacy connectivity and voice services.

Verizon in August announced it would acquire fleet and mobile management company Fleetmatics for $2.4 billion. In September, Verizon acquired IoT startup Sensity Systems, a smart LED lighting provider, to add more smart city control to its IoT development platform, ThingSpace. Verizon also announced a partnership with chipmaker Qualcomm to integrate ThingSpace with Qualcomm's modem technology in September. In November, Verizon bought LQD WiFi, a privately-held company that develops outdoor interactive displays and kiosks for smart city use cases.

AT&T was also busy in the IoT space. The carrier rolled out Fleet Complete to its solution provider partners in August, a fleet and mobile workforce management offering. In March, AT&T made Control Center available through the channel, a cloud-based IoT platform for deploying, managing and scaling IoT applications and devices connected to AT&T's 4G LTE network.