Are Radio-Based IoT Systems Still Relevant in a 5G World?
From what I’ve seen in the field, there's a clear tension emerging in the IoT landscape: on one hand, we have the rise of ubiquitous cellular connectivity — 4G, LTE-M, NB-IoT, and now 5G. On the other, we have legacy (and often fragmented) radio-based systems still clinging to relevance in industrial, smart home, and rural deployments.
It raises the question: do we still need radio-based IoT protocols in a world increasingly connected by high-bandwidth cellular networks?
In my opinion, the answer is both yes and no. But to understand why, we need to unpack what’s worked, what hasn’t, and where the industry is heading.
The Rise and Stall of Proprietary Radio Standards
Over the past decade, we’ve seen a proliferation of short-range, low-power wireless protocols that promised to be the backbone of connected devices: Zigbee, LoRaWAN, Z-Wave, Thread, and others.
At the time, they seemed necessary. Wi-Fi consumed too much power. Bluetooth lacked range and robustness. Cellular was too expensive and power-hungry. So, purpose-built mesh and LPWAN protocols emerged to fill the gap.
But most of these radio-based standards have struggled to achieve broad adoption, especially in fragmented or multi-vendor environments.
Let’s be honest — Zigbee was a mess. Too many versions, poor device interoperability, and confusing certification processes led to frustration for both manufacturers and consumers. LoRaWAN, while more promising in large-scale industrial use cases, has seen mixed results due to complex gateway infrastructure, poor performance in dense urban environments, and proprietary backhaul platforms that undermined its promise of openness.
The idea of decentralised, private, low-power radio networks sounded great — but in practice, they were often unreliable, hard to maintain, and difficult to scale.
Enter Matter: A Reset for Local Radio?
The Matter protocol, spearheaded by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (formerly Zigbee Alliance), represents a reset.
Unlike Zigbee, Matter is designed for IP-based, Wi-Fi and Thread-compatible communication, with a focus on true interoperability between devices, regardless of vendor. It aims to bring order to the chaos of smart home standards and reduce the friction of connecting lights, thermostats, sensors, and voice assistants.
In my opinion, Matter could finally give local radio — specifically Thread — a shot at long-term relevance. Thread’s low-power mesh capabilities combined with Matter’s device standardisation offer a viable ecosystem that doesn’t rely on cloud APIs or cellular backhaul.
But even Matter isn’t a silver bullet. It still requires a Thread Border Router (which often means another hub), and its reliance on Wi-Fi and Thread makes it unsuitable for many outdoor or wide-area applications.
The Cellular Edge: More Affordable, More Efficient, More Ubiquitous
While radio standards falter, cellular connectivity is quietly eating their lunch — particularly in industrial, agricultural, and wide-area applications.
Thanks to advances in LTE-M, NB-IoT, and low-cost 4G modems, cellular is no longer the bloated, expensive beast it once was. It’s increasingly efficient, affordable, and (importantly) doesn’t require complex mesh topologies or local gateways.
The newer generation of LTE/5G chipsets are optimised for battery-powered IoT use cases, support fallback modes for areas with poor coverage, and come with integrated eSIM capabilities that simplify deployment.
For rural deployments — such as environmental monitoring, smart farming, and infrastructure inspection — this is a game-changer. You can now drop a device in the middle of nowhere, let it send data directly to the cloud, and never worry about building or maintaining a local radio network.
Even in semi-urban environments, 4G is often more reliable than LoRa, particularly when you factor in interference, congestion, and the unpredictable reliability of mesh backhauls.
But What About Low-Coverage Areas?
Of course, there are still places — remote valleys, basements, dense metal structures — where cellular coverage is poor or non-existent. And this is where local radio systems still play a role.
In my experience, a hybrid approach is often the most practical:
- Use local radio (like 433 MHz, Sub-GHz proprietary, or Thread) for short-range, energy-efficient sensor data collection.
- Then use cellular backhaul via a gateway or edge hub to relay that data to the cloud.
This architecture allows for offline operation, batch uploading, and fallback logic if cloud connectivity is temporarily unavailable. It’s not as elegant as direct-to-cloud cellular, but it’s effective for critical or isolated systems.
Radio Isn’t Dead, But It’s No Longer King
In my opinion, the age of radio-first IoT design is behind us.
For most new applications, cellular is becoming the default — especially as module prices drop, roaming SIMs become more flexible, and power requirements continue to improve.
That said, radio still has a place in:
- Indoor smart home applications (especially with Matter + Thread)
- Environments with no cellular coverage
- Ultra-low-power applications where even LTE-M is too heavy
- Closed-loop or offline systems that don’t need real-time cloud communication
But the future looks increasingly like cloud-first, cellular-first IoT, where radio is just one tool in the box — not the foundation of your architecture.
If you’re building for resilience, scale, and low maintenance, you might want to think twice before spinning up another LoRa mesh or proprietary radio stack.