The connectivity of an IoT device to the internet is different from typical consumer-based cellular devices like a smartphone. A smartphone mainly pulls information off the internet in a downlink. Often that data is large and streaming in real time, such as video data and music data. In an IoT deployment, the data can be very sparse and arrive in short bursts. More often than not, the majority of data will be generated by the device and travel over the uplink. The LTE evolution has progressed in building a cellular infrastructure and a business model focused and optimized for mobile consumers. The new shift is to satisfy the IoT producers of data at the edge as that will dwarf the number of consumers. The following sections cover Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN) and specifically the LTE variety of LPWAN. These are suitable for IoT deployments and the features vary.

Up until release 13, the lowest data rate suitable for typical IoT devices was Cat-1. As the mobile revolution demanded higher speeds and services, Cat-1 was overlooked in the 3G and 4G timeline. Release 12 and 13 addressed the IoT device requirements for low cost, low power, sparse transmission, and range extensions. 

Cat-1 hasn't gained significant traction in the market and we won't go into the specification here as it is similar to the 4G-LTE material discussed previously.