Satellite IoT Passes 7 Million Subscribers and Berg Insight Sees 42 Million by 2030

Introduction

Satellite connectivity for the Internet of Things stopped being a niche corner of the telemetry market somewhere in the last two years, and the numbers now confirm it. The global satellite IoT subscriber base grew past 7.0 million in 2025, and the IoT analyst firm Berg Insight projects it will compound at 43.1 percent a year to reach 42.0 million connections by 2030 — roughly six times the current installed base in five years.

The headline figure is the growth rate, but the more interesting part of the new Berg Insight study is what sits underneath it. Satellite IoT is no longer a separate communications layer bolted onto a device. Operators are increasingly building on radio technologies that terrestrial device ecosystems already understand: 3GPP 4G and 5G, LoRa, and in one commercial case, Bluetooth itself. That convergence is what turns satellite from a specialist product into an extension of an existing connectivity portfolio — and it changes where the complexity in an IoT architecture actually sits.

For anyone building connected fleets, the practical consequence is a shift in how you buy and manage connectivity. The decision is increasingly less about "terrestrial or satellite" and more about how gracefully a device, its platform and its operator handle both at once.

Main Content

Seven million today, 42 million by 2030

Berg Insight's forecast puts the 2025 satellite IoT subscriber base at just over 7.0 million, rising at a compound annual growth rate of 43.1 percent to 42.0 million units in 2030. The research firm notes that only about 10 percent of the Earth's surface has access to terrestrial connectivity services, which is the structural reason the category exists at all: the addressable gap is geographic, not competitive.

At roughly 42 million connections, satellite remains a small slice of the wider IoT connectivity market — Berg Insight's separate cellular work puts cellular IoT at 6.5 billion devices connected by 2030. But growth of this magnitude in a small segment changes its role inside device programmes. A connectivity option that carried a niche share of fleet deployments in 2025 is on track to be a mainstream design requirement by the end of the decade.

The incumbents still hold the subscriber base

The current market remains led by established satellite providers. Berg Insight identifies Iridium, ORBCOMM, Viasat/Inmarsat and Globalstar as the largest satellite IoT network operators today.

The numbers behind that are concrete. Iridium grew its installed base by 6 percent over the year and reached 2.1 million subscribers, keeping the number one spot. ORBCOMM — originally a dedicated satellite operator — has transitioned into an end-to-end solution provider, delivering services on its own network while also acting as a reseller partner for Viasat and others; it reported around 950,000 satellite IoT subscribers across its own and Viasat's networks at the end of 2025. Globalstar reported 540,000 subscribers. Below them, several players sit in the tens of thousands, including Myriota in Australia, Kinéis in France and Thuraya in the UAE.

That distribution matters. The leaders are not merely the companies with the largest constellations — Iridium, ORBCOMM and Globalstar built their businesses on narrowband satellite messaging, which is exactly the traffic pattern that asset tracking generates.

Forty-four operators, and more than two dozen newcomers

The competitive picture is where the forecast gets its momentum. Berg Insight's study covers 44 satellite IoT operators in total, and among them more than two dozen newer initiatives. The names on that list include AST SpaceMobile, Geespace, Hubble Network, Kinéis, Ligado Networks, Lynk, Myriota, Elveo Mobile, OQ Technology, Plan-S, Sateliot, Skylo and Starlink. Many are built on low-Earth-orbit smallsat architectures, which is what makes a business case that did not exist a decade ago plausible now.

What separates this cohort from the incumbents is not simply that there are more satellites. It is which radios they chose to speak.

Terrestrial radios on orbit

The most consequential finding in the study is that a growing number of these networks are adopting radio technologies with established terrestrial device ecosystems. Berg Insight groups them by technology: operators using 3GPP 4G and 5G include OQ Technology, AST SpaceMobile, Elveo Mobile, Sateliot, Ligado Networks, Skylo, Open Cosmos, Iridium, Terrestar Solutions, Geespace and Starlink. A separate group — EchoStar Mobile, Fossa Systems, Lacuna Space, Innova Space and Plan-S — is building around LoRa. And Hubble Network is taking a third route entirely, enabling direct satellite communication from ordinary Bluetooth devices.

This is the substance of the hybrid shift. Historically, adding satellite coverage meant adding a dedicated radio, antenna and connectivity service — a separate product family with separate certification and separate lifecycle management. Standards-based non-terrestrial network approaches using familiar terrestrial technologies create the possibility of reducing that separation.

For manufacturers, the practical implication is real but qualified. If terrestrial and satellite connectivity can increasingly share device hardware, standards or connectivity management infrastructure, OEMs may be able to support remote coverage without maintaining entirely separate satellite-specific product families. That does not eliminate antenna, power, certification or network-integration requirements, but it can change where the complexity sits in the IoT architecture — shifting it from the device designer toward the connectivity platform.

The MVNO channel is doing the real work

A trend that has developed over the past two years is collaborations between satellite operators and mobile operators and MVNOs exploring hybrid satellite-terrestrial connectivity. Skylo has been the most active NTN provider in that space, working with Deutsche Telekom, Verizon, Telefónica, Orange, Vodafone, KPN, Soracom, Monogoto, floLIVE, emnify, Blues Wireless, BICS, Semtech, Cubic, Multibyte Info, Tele2, Spectrum Mobile and Xfinity Mobile.

Other satellite IoT operators pursuing mobile operator and MVNO partnerships include AST SpaceMobile, Iridium, Elveo Mobile, OQ Technology, Sateliot, SES, Starlink, Terrestar and Viasat.

The channel structure is worth noting. Satellite capacity reaches enterprises through the same reseller and MVNO relationships that already sell terrestrial SIMs and connectivity management — which turns satellite from a specialist service into something closer to an extension of an existing IoT portfolio. A field-services buyer who already has an MVNO relationship can add satellite coverage as a line item rather than a new procurement exercise.

That does not make it trivial. NB-IoT is already being extended to LEO satellite coverage through collaborations between mobile IoT providers and satellite operators, and other projects are combining terrestrial cellular, satellite and Wi-Fi connectivity inside the same device architecture. The engineering is converging faster than the procurement habits.

Why coverage still decides the business case

Underneath the technology convergence, the business case remains stubbornly geographic. Berg Insight points to maritime operations, remote agriculture, energy infrastructure, construction sites and transportation routes — places where building conventional network infrastructure is impractical.

Asset tracking is particularly well aligned with this model, because connected assets move repeatedly between terrestrial coverage and remote areas. For those deployments, the emerging architecture is not about choosing satellite instead of cellular or LPWAN. It is about maintaining connectivity when the preferred terrestrial network disappears — which is why asset tracking, not telemetry backhaul, drives most of the volume in the current installed base.

Conclusion

Berg Insight's 42-million-connection forecast for 2030 is a growth number, but the structural change underneath it is the shift from separate satellite stacks to shared terrestrial ones. When an NB-IoT module, a LoRa sensor or a Bluetooth device can reach orbit without a bespoke product family, the satellite decision stops being an architecture decision and becomes a connectivity-management one.

That does not flatten the incumbents. Iridium, ORBCOMM and Globalstar still hold 3.59 million of the roughly 7 million connections in service, and Iridium added 6 percent to its base last year. But the entrants arriving with 4G, 5G and LoRa compatibility are competing on the same device roadmaps their customers already buy.

For enterprises watching connected fleets, the practical takeaway from this study is narrow and actionable: connectivity platform selection is starting to matter more than radio selection. As Berg Insight's own framing puts it, the relevant distinction may increasingly shift from terrestrial versus satellite toward how efficiently devices, platforms and operators manage both within the same deployment. Buyers who treat satellite as a separate tender will keep paying for it as one.

Images

Illustrative photograph of a parabolic antenna dish installed on a facility roof. The antenna shown is a terrestrial earth-station unit and is not one of the low-Earth-orbit assets named in the Berg Insight study.

Illustrative photograph of consumer-grade Ku and Ka band dish antennas on display at a trade-show booth, not installed equipment. Both carry third-party manufacturer branding.

Illustrative photograph of Iridium handheld satellite terminals being field-familiarized. Iridium is the largest satellite IoT operator in the Berg Insight data, at 2.1 million subscribers.

References

• Satellite IoT Connections Set to Reach 42 Million by 2030 — IoT Business News
• The global satellite IoT subscriber base to reach 42 million by 2030 — MundoGEO
• Satellite IoT subscribers to soar 43% to 42 million by 2030 — Telecompaper
• Berg Insight, The Satellite IoT Communications Market, via Berg Insight

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