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LTE Cat 1 bis vs LTE-M / NB-IoT

Infuse-SDK adds Cat 1 bis as an out-of-the-box comms layer, with nRF93M1 work upstream in Zephyr.

2026-09-11 · Jordan Yates

LTE Cat M1 / LTE-M / NB-IoT were designed for ultra-low power, low data, long-range communications — pretty much the sweet spot where Infuse-SDK offers the greatest value. That said, over the past year we have encountered a number of countries and operators around the world that do not support these, which makes it a challenging choice for global IoT solutions.

Recently we have been looking towards LTE Cat 1 bis, which works across standard LTE networks worldwide and still achieves low-power operation at a low cost. It does have less range than LTE-M / NB-IoT, but it also has a lot more bandwidth allocated by network operators. That matters for even slightly higher throughput devices: it allows more devices per cell tower — a limitation we ran into with LTE-M devices deployed at scale in the same area / same tower coverage.

In updating Infuse-SDK to support Cat 1 bis as an out-of-the-box low-power comms layer, we have been improving support for Nordic Semiconductor’s nRF93M1 (opens in a new tab) Cat 1 bis modem in upstream Zephyr. Some of the fixes we have pushed:

Nordic’s nRF93M1 development kits are now available through electronics suppliers. Creating a commercial low-power IoT solution using Cat 1 bis has never been easier with Infuse-SDK (opens in a new tab).

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