Skylo and Monogoto use 3GPP NTN standards to slash IoT costs

The shift toward standardized non-terrestrial networks removes the friction of proprietary hardware, allowing IoT devices to function globally on a single SKU. For the streaming and data delivery ecosystem, this expansion of the addressable market into the 85% of the Earth lacking terrestrial coverage creates new opportunities for low-bandwidth telemetry and remote monitoring. As hardware costs drop from hundreds of dollars to near-commodity levels, the industry moves toward a hybrid connectivity model where satellite is a standard failover rather than a niche luxury. Watch for whether the GSMA's push for sub-$1 monthly connection fees triggers a surge in high-volume industrial deployments by 2027.

Skylo has been building momentum in the direct-to-device satellite IoT space, positioning itself as a neutral connectivity layer that aggregates multiple satellite operators. In early 2026, Skylo announced a partnership with Qualcomm to integrate NTN connectivity into the Snapdragon X35 modem, targeting mass-market IoT modules that can switch between terrestrial LTE and satellite without hardware changes. That move places Skylo in direct competition with other NTN aggregators, including AST SpaceMobile and Lynk Global, which have pursued their own chipset integrations. Monogoto, the Israeli MVNO platform, has similarly expanded its satellite IoT offering, announcing in May 2026 that its multi-network SIM platform now supports 3GPP Release 17 NTN profiles across three satellite constellations, enabling single-SKU global deployment for logistics and agriculture customers. The regulatory and standards landscape is accelerating adoption. The 3GPP completed Release 18 work items on NTN enhancements in March 2026, adding support for narrowband IoT over geostationary and low-Earth-orbit satellites with reduced device complexity requirements. GSMA published a white paper in April 2026 outlining a roadmap for sub-$1 monthly satellite IoT connection pricing, arguing that standardized modems and shared spectrum access could bring satellite connectivity costs in line with terrestrial LPWAN. The ITU also allocated additional L-band spectrum for mobile satellite services at WRC-23, which analysts at Omdia estimated could support over 500 million NTN IoT connections by 2030. These regulatory tailwinds reduce the barrier for companies like Skylo and Monogoto to offer commercial services without country-by-country spectrum negotiations. On the technical side, independent testing has validated the feasibility of commodity hardware for NTN. In June 2026, Suntech demonstrated a $22 NB-IoT module achieving successful registration and data transfer over a geostationary satellite link using 3GPP Release 17 NTN signaling, with latency measurements averaging 620 milliseconds round-trip and packet delivery rates above 97% for 128-byte payloads. That performance aligns with Skylo's claims about hybrid terrestrial-satellite handover, where devices maintain session continuity when moving between coverage zones. Qualcomm's own field trials with Snapdragon X35 showed that NTN-capable modules consumed only 15% more power than terrestrial-only equivalents during idle-mode satellite monitoring, a critical metric for battery-powered sensors in agriculture and asset tracking. These benchmarks suggest that the cost and power barriers that historically limited satellite IoT to high-value verticals are falling rapidly.