The True Cost of Cellular IoT: What Module Prices Don't Include

Who This Is For

You’re evaluating connectivity options for a battery-powered IoT device. You’ve seen LTE-M and NB-IoT module prices in the $10-25 range and you’re building a cost model to compare against alternatives like LoRaWAN, BLE, or satellite.

This article breaks down what cellular IoT actually costs beyond the module price. By the end, you’ll be able to build an accurate total cost of ownership model for your specific deployment.

We’ll use a running example throughout: a GPS asset tracker that sends a 50-byte location payload every 15 minutes, deployed in North America, with a target 3-year battery life and an initial production run of 10,000 units.

The LTE-M module costs $15. Your product manager sees the number and builds a business case around it. Six months later, you’re $200,000 into carrier certification, your battery life is a fraction of what you projected, and monthly connectivity fees are compounding faster than expected.

This is the cellular IoT trap. Module pricing is the visible cost. Everything else—carrier fees, certification, power design, engineering time—adds up to 3-5x what that initial number suggested.

Module Hardware: The Tip of the Iceberg

Base LTE-M and NB-IoT modules from vendors like Quectel, u-blox, and Sierra Wireless range from $8-25 depending on category, band support, and volume. That’s the number you’ll find on distributor sites.

What isn’t included:

Supporting components. Cellular modules require external components that BLE designs don’t: SIM card holders (or eSIM provisioning), more complex antenna matching networks, additional power management ICs to handle peak current demands, and EMI shielding to meet regulatory requirements.

PCB impact. Cellular RF design is less forgiving than BLE. Expect more PCB layers, larger keep-out zones, and tighter layout constraints. These add manufacturing cost that doesn’t show up in the module line item.

Antenna complexity. Cellular antennas must cover multiple frequency bands (often 10+ bands for global devices). This typically means larger antennas, more expensive tuning components, or external antenna connectors.

For our asset tracker: A Quectel BG96 module costs ~$15 at 10K quantity. Add a SIM holder ($0.30), LTE antenna ($2-4), additional decoupling capacitors and EMI filtering ($1-2), and a beefier LDO to handle 2A peaks ($1-2). The RF subsystem BOM is $20-24, not $15.

Carrier and Connectivity Fees

Monthly connectivity is where costs compound over device lifetime.

IoT MVNOs like 1NCE, Hologram, and Onomondo offer rates from $0.50-2/month for minimal data. 1NCE’s model is notable: $10-15 for 500MB over 10 years with no monthly fees—effectively $1-1.50/year. This works for ultra-low-data applications sending small payloads infrequently.

Blues Notecard bundles connectivity differently: modules ship with 500MB and 10 years of service prepaid, with consumption-based pricing for cloud services. The hardware costs more upfront ($33-49 depending on variant), but eliminates separate carrier negotiations.

Direct carrier plans from AT&T, Verizon, or T-Mobile typically cost more—$2-10/month—but may be required for certain enterprise deployments or specific network features.

Hidden connectivity costs:

• Activation fees: $1-5 per device on some plans
• Data overage: A firmware bug that chatters unexpectedly can blow through data caps
• SIM logistics: Physical SIM provisioning, inventory management, and replacement
• Roaming: Global deployments multiply costs; roaming agreements are complex and pricing is often opaque

For our asset tracker: 50 bytes every 15 minutes = 4.7MB/year including protocol overhead. Over 3 years, roughly 15MB total—well within 1NCE’s 500MB allowance. At $15 for connectivity + SIM, that’s $5/year. But if we later add firmware OTA updates (1MB each) or increase reporting frequency, we’ll hit limits faster. Budget $15-25 lifetime for a comfortable margin.

Certification: The Cost Nobody Budgets For

Cellular certification is where projects get blindsided. Here’s what’s actually involved.

What PTCRB Certification Actually Tests

PTCRB (PCS Type Certification Review Board) certification is required for any cellular device operating on North American networks. The certification verifies three things:

Protocol conformance. Your device correctly implements the 3GPP LTE-M or NB-IoT protocol stack. This includes network registration, authentication, data transfer, power saving modes, and dozens of edge cases defined in the spec.

RF performance. Your device transmits at the correct power levels, on the correct frequencies, without interfering with adjacent channels. This includes testing across all supported bands, at temperature extremes, and at voltage limits.

Over-the-air (OTA) performance. Your complete device—module, antenna, enclosure—achieves adequate radiated power (TRP) and receiver sensitivity (TIS). This is where your antenna design and enclosure materials get validated.

The Testing Process

If you’re using a pre-certified module (like the Quectel BG96), you’re building an “integrated device.” The module vendor has already passed protocol conformance and RF performance testing. You inherit their certification for those portions.

What remains for integrated devices:

1. SIM interface testing — Verifies your SIM holder and electrical connections work correctly
2. RF interface testing — Validates your antenna matching and any filtering you’ve added
3. OTA testing — Tests your complete device’s radiated performance in an anechoic chamber

Your device spins on a positioner while test equipment measures radiated power and sensitivity across a 3D sphere. Poor antenna placement, lossy enclosure materials, or nearby metal components show up here as degraded performance.

Timeline and Costs

Filing fees: $1,500-4,500 for first-time certification, $1,500 for subsequent devices.

Lab testing fees: This is the expensive part.

Carrier-specific certification adds another layer. AT&T requires devices to meet their specific TRP/TIS thresholds on top of PTCRB. Verizon has their own Open Development program. Each adds $5,000-15,000 and 2-4 weeks.

For our asset tracker: Using a pre-certified module with an external antenna is the fastest path. Budget $20,000-30,000 total for PTCRB plus one carrier certification, with a 6-8 week timeline. At 10,000 units, that’s $2-3/device. But remember—this is paid upfront before you’ve sold a single unit.

Re-certification Triggers

You will need to re-certify if you:

• Change the cellular module
• Change the antenna or antenna placement significantly
• Modify RF matching components
• Change enclosure materials or geometry in ways that affect RF
• Add features that change device behavior during certification tests

A “quick design revision” to fix a mechanical issue can trigger $20,000+ in re-testing if it affects the antenna environment.

Power System: The Physics Tax

Cellular’s power demands fundamentally change hardware design.

Peak current draw for LTE-M transmission is 300-500mA, with brief spikes up to 2A during initial network registration. Compare this to BLE’s 5-15mA transmission current. That’s a 20-100x difference.

Battery sizing must accommodate these peaks. A coin cell that powers a BLE tracker for 3 years might last weeks on cellular. Cellular devices typically require lithium-polymer cells in the 500-2000mAh range—larger, heavier, more expensive.

Power management becomes more sophisticated. You need voltage regulators that can handle high transient loads, often with large reservoir capacitors. The power supply section of a cellular design is meaningfully more complex than BLE.

Thermal considerations matter at high duty cycles. 500mA through a small module generates heat that can affect reliability or require thermal management.

Power-saving modes (PSM and eDRX) help, but have tradeoffs. PSM can reduce average current to microamps, but the device is unreachable during sleep. eDRX provides a middle ground but still consumes more than always-off BLE advertising.

For our asset tracker: Sending every 15 minutes with PSM between transmissions. Each transmission cycle: ~30 seconds active at 150mA average (network reacquisition + data transfer) = 1.25mAh per cycle. 96 cycles/day = 120mAh/day. For 3 years: ~131Ah total. A 2000mAh cell gets you about 16 days, not 3 years. You need either a much larger battery, solar harvesting, or reduced transmission frequency. The “15-minute updates for 3 years on battery” requirement is physically impossible with cellular.

Budget $3-10 additional BOM cost for power systems compared to an equivalent BLE design—and revisit your battery life assumptions.

Engineering and Integration Time

Cellular integration is more complex than simpler protocols. This costs engineering time.

AT command complexity. Cellular modules communicate via AT commands—a protocol dating to the Hayes modem era. Connection management, error handling, network registration, and carrier-specific quirks require substantial firmware development.

Power state management. Implementing PSM and eDRX correctly to hit battery life targets requires careful engineering. The gap between datasheet power numbers and real-world consumption is often 2-5x until firmware is properly optimized.

OTA update infrastructure. Cellular enables remote firmware updates, but building reliable OTA requires server infrastructure, update verification, rollback mechanisms, and failure handling. This is valuable capability, but it’s not free to implement.

Field debugging. When a BLE device misbehaves, you can usually reproduce the problem locally. Cellular issues often involve specific towers, carrier configurations, or network conditions that are difficult to replicate in the lab.

For a team new to cellular IoT, budget 2-4 additional engineering months compared to BLE or Wi-Fi integration. At typical fully-loaded engineering costs, that’s $40,000-100,000 in development time.

Ongoing Operations

Deployment is not the end of costs.

Device management platforms like those from carriers or third parties charge $0.10-1/device/month for fleet management, monitoring, and remote configuration.

Support overhead is higher for cellular. Connectivity issues require carrier coordination. Debugging often needs specialized tools. Support tickets take longer to resolve.

SIM lifecycle management includes suspensions, reactivations, and carrier migrations. If a carrier deprecates a network technology or changes pricing, you may need to migrate devices in the field.

Sunset risk is real. 2G and 3G sunsets forced costly migrations for millions of devices. LTE-M and NB-IoT are current technologies, but AT&T has already announced NB-IoT will not be a long-term investment. Technology transitions happen.

Total Cost: The Real Numbers

Here’s what cellular IoT actually costs at 10,000 units over a 5-year device lifetime:

For our asset tracker at 10,000 units: Module BOM ($22) + certification ($2.50) + connectivity ($20) + power system ($5) + engineering ($6) + operations ($10) = $65.50/device lifetime cost.

That $15 module became $65+ per device—and we had to significantly compromise on battery life to make the physics work.

When Cellular IoT Makes Sense

Cellular is the right choice when you need capabilities that simpler protocols can’t provide:

Cellular is over-specified when:

• Devices send small payloads periodically (location, temperature, status)
• Latency of minutes to hours is acceptable
• Devices don’t need to receive commands in the field
• Battery life and hardware cost are primary constraints
• Deployment density allows for gateway infrastructure

What To Do Next

Before committing to cellular IoT:

1. Run the power math for your specific use case. Use your actual payload size, transmission frequency, and battery constraints. If the numbers don’t work, no amount of firmware optimization will fix physics.

2. Get certification quotes early. Contact a PTCRB-authorized test lab (7layers, Sporton, Bureau Veritas) with your module choice and antenna design. Get a real quote and timeline before you commit to a schedule.

3. Prototype with realistic duty cycles. Datasheet power numbers assume ideal conditions. Measure actual consumption with your firmware, in your enclosure, in marginal signal conditions.

4. Model lifetime connectivity cost at your actual volume. Compare 1NCE, Hologram, Blues, and direct carrier plans for your specific data usage pattern.

5. Decide if you need cellular’s unique capabilities. If latency tolerance, unidirectional data flow, and low power are acceptable, evaluate BLE-based networks (including satellite options for global coverage) before defaulting to cellular.

The right connectivity choice depends on your requirements, not industry convention. Build the full cost model and let the numbers guide you.

Hubble Network delivers global connectivity using standard Bluetooth hardware—no cellular modules, no carrier certification, no SIM cards. See how it works →