Satellite IoT connects sensors and trackers in places with no cellular or LoRaWAN coverage: oceans, deserts, pipelines, remote farms and shipping containers in transit. Two approaches coexist. Dedicated operators run constellations with proprietary modems that send short messages a few times a day, while the 3GPP non-terrestrial network work in Release 17 lets standard NB-IoT chipsets talk to satellites with firmware changes rather than new hardware.
The appeal is global reach from a single device design, which matters for asset tracking across borders. The trade-offs are cost per message, higher transmit power, a need for sky visibility and latency that can stretch to the next satellite pass for low-earth-orbit systems. Many products combine a terrestrial radio with satellite fallback, switching only when cellular IoT coverage disappears.
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