Vodafone has a new deal with Saudi tech and telecoms outfit Mobily to expand its IoT coverage in Saudi Arabia. The deal is between the UK-headquartered operator’s enterprise IoT arm (Vodafone Business IoT / Vodafone IoT) and the Saudi firm, and sees its customers able to roam onto the latter’s national cellular IoT network in the kingdom on their embedded SIMs (eSIMs; sold under the branding ‘Vodafone Global SIM’).
Vodafone Business ranks consistently well in analyst reviews for managed IoT services. It claims over 175 million IoT connections in 175 countries, and the largest low-power wide-area (LPWA) network footprint of any operator – supporting NB-IoT and LTE-M coverage in 92 countries, via its own network infrastructure in markets where it operates, and via roaming deals with the likes of Mobily elsewhere.
Vodafone IoT has been a standalone company since April last year (2024). Its move to spin-off its IoT business, one of the few carrier-led IoT operations with proper global scale, was part of a kind-of mysterious double deal with Microsoft to dichotomize and nebulise its airtime service operations, so its ancillary IoT unit existed separately of a national telecoms business remade in the cloud with the US firm’s help.
Its corporate nomenclature is a little confusing; the company swaps between Vodafone Business IoT and straight Vodafone IoT in business functions and job titles in press announcements. But the separation means Vodafone IoT manages sundry global IoT services for enterprise, and Vodafone Business, its global enterprise division, sells them – alongside private networks, edge/cloud solutions, and software-defined wide-area network (SD-WAN) services.
One way or another, via local networks and roaming deals, and via edge and cloud services, Vodafone Business is selling a whole raft of cellular-connected solutions to enterprise customers. In a press note from last year, related to a Gartner gong for its superiority in managed IoT (which it has won historically, and again this year), Erik Brenneis, chief executive at Vodafone IoT, called it “rewarding” to see how the IoT market has evolved over 10 years.
He stated: “We are now ready to hyperscale IoT. We are bringing together partners, investors and technology to create the IoT eco-system for the next decade. Vodafone’s recent announcement with Microsoft starts the ball rolling and gives us the potential to access new technologies such as Gen AI and to deploy these at scale for IoT.” This message is repeated and expanded in this article from RCR Wireless, still worth a read.
Of the new deal with Mobily, Brenneis said: “This partnership… expands our footprint in the Middle East, and enables us to provide managed IoT services to customers in… Saudi Arabia. [It] means we can now provide reliable, secure and compliant cross-border IoT connectivity to businesses looking to operate in the country. We look forward to hyperscaling our managed IoT connectivity service – where we connect more customers in more countries.”
Salman Al-Badran, chief executive at Mobily, said: “At Mobily, we continue to lead digital transformation in the region through our investment in advanced IoT technologies, opening up new opportunities and driving sustainable growth. This agreement will enable us to deliver advanced technologies solutions to both government and private sector clients, contributing to enhanced operational efficiency and creating promising investment opportunities.”
