Recently, market research firm Kaleido Intelligence released a report showing that the number of connections managed by global IoT virtual operators will reach 290 million by 2025, with projections indicating this figure will surge to 600 million by 2031. It can be said that as the Internet of Everything evolves towards intelligent connectivity, IoT virtual operators, serving as a crucial link between network infrastructure and applications across industries, are influencing the entire industrial landscape through their roles and business models. Domestically, the pilot commercialization of mobile IoT resale has already commenced, generating a wave of policy dividends. However, there have been few subsequent updates. Currently, numerous domestic vendors engage in businesses similar to IoT virtual operators, driving a massive scale of IoT connections. It is necessary to further achieve standardized development through various means.

Global IoT Virtual Operators: Concurrent Growth in Scale and Structural Differentiation

On the one hand, the global market size for IoT virtual operators continues to expand, demonstrating significant growth potential.

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, the global IoT virtual operator market is exhibiting robust growth. According to Kaleido Intelligence, global IoT virtual operators managed 290 million connections in 2025, representing a multiple-fold increase from 45 million in 2017. By 2031, this figure is expected to double to 600 million connections. In terms of revenue, global IoT virtual operators generated over $2.8 billion in connection and management revenue in 2025, with projections indicating this will double to $6.4 billion by 2031. These figures demonstrate that, despite macroeconomic and geopolitical pressures, the market for IoT virtual operations continues to expand.

On the other hand, leading players are further expanding their scale and achieving growth through differentiation.

The current global IoT MVNO market landscape is clear, but connection scale and revenue are not entirely proportional, showing significant differentiation.

From a connection scale perspective, three vendors—1NCE, Cubic3, and KORE Wireless—account for 28% of the managed connections among IoT virtual operators, with notably distinct paths:

1NCE, a well-known German virtual operator, gained prominence early on through special pricing, most notably its affordable '€10 for 10 years' plan. Combined with its expanding roaming coverage and self-service capabilities, it achieved rapid growth this year. However, the company previously focused more on low-bandwidth, low-cost connections, challenging its ability to scale revenue. Currently, it is striving to align with mission-critical IoT demands by upgrading infrastructure and advanced orchestration management functions, aiming for higher revenue per connection.

Cubic3 transitioned from an early-stage, full-industry virtual operator to a deep dive into the automotive and industrial/agricultural sectors, with most of its connection base coming from the automotive segment. Today, Cubic3 shifts its focus to big data analytics and software solutions, helping clients monetize while continuing to innovate in 5G, attempting to shed its label as a mere virtual operator.

KORE Wireless was once a 'star' in the IoT virtual operator space, and the author has tracked its development. In recent years, the company has faced operational challenges and experienced setbacks in its acquisition of Twilio's IoT business, with its strategic focus appearing scattered at times. Recently, under new capital operations and a rebranded launch, its business has begun to return to normalcy.

In terms of revenue, Wireless Logic takes the lead. Unlike 1NCE's low-price, high-volume approach, Wireless Logic firmly executes an internal R&D and targeted acquisition strategy, firmly occupying high-value market segments. The company's comprehensive capabilities in connection, device, security, and application enablement significantly reduce client deployment challenges.

Despite overall market growth, the industry still faces widespread concerns over 'increasing connections without increasing revenue.' While enterprises' reliance on IoT deepens, they recognize that the lowest-cost connections are not necessarily optimal, especially given compliance and control requirements. Consequently, virtual operators' sole reliance on roaming coverage and low-cost data plans is hitting a bottleneck. Many virtual operators' sales teams are accustomed to selling 'connections' rather than 'value' (e.g., reducing compliance costs, cost optimization, security control), leading to ROI challenges, particularly for pure resellers, whose growth prospects are concerning.

Additionally, technology alone is no longer the sole moat; ecological integration capabilities are key. Wireless Logic addressed capability gaps through acquisitions, KORE Wireless attempted transformation through acquiring Twilio IoT, and SoftBank also acquired Cubic Telecom. Future market concentration will further increase, with players possessing capital operation capabilities and strong ecological cooperation networks gaining a competitive edge. Successful IoT virtual operators will be those that can integrate basic operator networks, resale channels, and hardware/software module suppliers into an efficiently executed ecosystem.

Domestic IoT Virtual Operators: Exploration and Future Prospects

In May 2013, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) released the , officially opening the telecommunications market to private capital. Virtual operators were once highly anticipated, with hopes of creating a 'catfish effect' to disrupt the industry landscape. In 2016, the industry achieved collective breakthroughs, with user scale doubling and some enterprises finding business models and achieving profitability. In May 2018, mobile resale services transitioned to formal commercialization, but the user market had become saturated, with issues like 'wholesale-retail price inversion' becoming increasingly severe. By 2019, domestic mobile resale in-network users peaked at 145 million, followed by a sustained decline. The latest data shows that by the end of 2025, virtual operators had only 42.65 million in-network users, a 71% reduction from the peak; industry revenue totaled ¥3.35 billion in 2025, down 28.6% year-on-year.

While mobile resale faced difficulties, IoT development opened a new window for virtual operators. On March 18, 2020, MIIT issued the , launching a mobile IoT business resale pilot from May 1, 2020, and clarifying approval conditions and safety management responsibilities. This policy opened up new growth space for virtual operators.

On January 12, 2021, China Unicom held a virtual operator partner conference in Beijing, officially launching the IoT resale pilot. Seven enterprises, including Lenovo Connect, Uroaming, and Hongdou Telecom, became the first batch of pilot partners, forming a dual-wheel drive model of basic resale and IoT resale.

In January 2023, MIIT issued the , with Uroaming becoming the first private enterprise to receive approval for IoT resale. In February 2023, the 'IoT resale pilot operation' officially commenced. In May 2023, Lenovo Connect also received approval for the mobile IoT business resale pilot. This marked the formal extension of mobile resale from personal communication to IoT communication, taking a substantive step towards differentiated operations.

However, IoT virtual operations face similar issues domestically, with unresolved wholesale-retail price inversion problems, strong dependence on basic operators, and limited technical capabilities among virtual operators. Security control is also a major challenge for IoT resale businesses, with IoT cards being illegally used, spawning numerous telecom fraud issues. Some resale business management documents explicitly require disabling voice and point-to-point SMS functions and setting minimum necessary data traffic (data traffic should be translated as 'data traffic' or 'data usage' based on context; here, 'data traffic limits') limits to address these issues.

To date, there is no relevant authoritative data on the overall operations of domestic IoT virtual operators, nor have vendors engaged in IoT resale businesses heavily promoted their activities. However, the IoT resale business has not experienced the rapid decline seen in personal mobile communication resale; instead, it has achieved sustained growth, providing rapid connectivity support for digitization across numerous industries. Meanwhile, as technologies like eSIM become increasingly standardized, the barriers to IoT resale continue to lower.

The author has previously argued that domestic vendors can continuously learn from the experiences of overseas IoT virtual operators to forge their own path of high-quality development, primarily by:

1. Further focusing on high-value sectors. Domestically, there are already numerous IoT card resellers and IoT connection management platforms, but they primarily focus on 'selling cards for volume' without forming a 'Platform-as-a-Service' model or achieving high user concentration. In the future, they can learn from the experiences of outstanding overseas vendors, continuously deep cultivation (deep dive) into high-value sectors, break away from mere connection services, and leverage the latest advancements in artificial intelligence large models and intelligent agents to provide more value-added services.

2. Paying high attention to enterprise needs for overseas expansion. Virtual operators have distinct advantages in providing services in the global market. The overseas expansion of China's intelligent products continues to grow. In this process, embedding IoT functionality is crucial. Virtual operators could focus on the needs of enterprises going overseas, particularly gaining a thorough understanding of overseas market compliance issues regarding intelligent connectivity and data, to provide more support for domestic products expanding overseas.

Domestically, numerous vendors engage in IoT resale businesses. Although they may not hold specialized licenses, they leverage mature platforms and in-depth understanding of industry clients to extend IoT connectivity capabilities across various sectors.