Telecom’s Next Battle Will Take Place in the Web’s Slow Lane

The telecommunications industry has found a new battleground: slower, narrowband systems.

Vodafone is building a wireless network that’s cheap and robust enough to link items like garbage cans or garden soil sensors to the internet, so refuse companies will know when to send the truck and the roses get just the right amount of water. The system, in Madrid, is the vanguard of what will eventually be a global Vodafone narrowband network for the so-called internet-of-things -- millions, perhaps billions, of connected devices designed to save businesses money and time, and free consumers from mundane tasks. The new grid is cheaper to run than than regular mobile and WiFi networks because it uses less power. It’s designed for gadgets like gas meters or traffic-light signals that check in sporadically, rather than driverless cars or heart monitors, which speak continuously to the net.

To carriers like Vodafone, the networks represent a way to replace income from voice and data bundles that are becoming commoditized. Champions of the narrowband IoT envision homes and neighborhoods teeming with devices, blipping away for a few cents a day on batteries that last for years.