Com4, SGP.32 and 25 Years of Cellular IoT

First, cellular replaced the telephone line

There was a time when putting a mobile connection into a machine felt genuinely novel. Around the turn of the century, Nordic telecoms firms such as Nokia and Ericsson were selling fixed cellular terminals whose job was to take the GSM network and make it useful to equipment designed for a telephone line.

The Nokia 22 is a good example. It was sold mainly as a PBX connectivity terminal: a business could connect its telephone system to GSM, route calls over the mobile network and gain connectivity where installing a conventional fixed line was inconvenient or impossible. Ericsson served much the same market with fixed cellular terminals such as the F250m, aimed squarely at PBX applications and least-cost routing over GSM. These were not what we would now call IoT gateways, but they were part of the ancestry.

The next generation makes the relationship clearer. The Nokia 32 added GPRS data alongside its voice and PBX functions and worked as a GSM modem, letting a PC browse the internet and send faxes. Ericsson's F251m, a fixed cellular terminal for small and home office use, similarly combined telephone and fax with computer and data connectivity. Suddenly the cellular box was not merely replacing the telephone line. It was starting to connect the computer. And once cellular began connecting computers and controllers rather than just people, the path towards modern M2M and IoT was open.

The 3G router completes the transformation

By the end of the decade the evolution was obvious. Ericsson's W30 and W35 Mobile Broadband Routers, introduced around 2009, look remarkably familiar today. The W30 was essentially the data model; the W35 added voice and fax. Both used 3G WCDMA/HSPA as the primary connection with GSM/GPRS/EDGE fallback, and both provided Ethernet, Wi-Fi, DHCP, NAT and a web configuration interface. They could share a single mobile connection between several computers.

This was no longer merely a GSM terminal. It was recognisably a cellular router. The W35 reached HSPA rates of up to 7.2 Mbps downstream, with uplink in the low single-digit Mbps range. Unimpressive beside today's 5G equipment, but at the time enough to present mobile broadband as an alternative to DSL where fixed connectivity was poor. The line between fixed and mobile communications was disappearing. The next step was to make the whole thing industrial.

M2M becomes a market of its own

While consumer mobile broadband grew, another market developed more quietly. Businesses did not necessarily need broadband. They needed machines to send small amounts of data reliably: alarm panels, utility meters, vehicle trackers, payment terminals, vending machines, industrial controllers, lifts, environmental monitors, remote pumps, energy equipment. The common requirement was simple. There is a machine somewhere and somebody needs to communicate with it.

That created the specialist M2M market. Instead of consumer mobile contracts, companies bought M2M SIMs. Instead of ordinary internet access, deployments used private APNs and VPNs. Instead of managing one handset at a time, platforms managed hundreds or thousands of devices. And instead of replacing equipment every two or three years, an M2M installation might need to run for a decade. That difference in lifecycle would eventually become enormously important.

Com4 enters at the right moment

Com4 was founded in Oslo in 2011, a particularly interesting time to enter cellular M2M. 2G was well established, 3G had made mobile broadband normal, and 4G was beginning to arrive. Machine connectivity was becoming important enough to justify dedicated specialists, but the term IoT had not yet swallowed every connected product on earth.

Built around M2M and IoT connectivity rather than consumer mobile, Com4 developed something more substantial than a portfolio of roaming SIMs over the following decade. It became one of the relatively small number of Norwegian operators with its own dedicated core network and its own M2M platform. That distinction matters. The mobile core sits behind the radio network and controls much of what actually happens to a connected subscriber: authentication, routing, policies, services and data handling. Greater control over that layer lets a provider build services around machines rather than reselling somebody else's consumer proposition. The Nokia and Ericsson boxes had become more intelligent, and now the connectivity provider was becoming more intelligent too.

Networks built for machines

The next significant change came when the mobile industry began creating network technologies specifically for machines. Traditional 3G and 4G worked well for many IoT applications, but they could be unnecessarily expensive, power hungry and complex for devices that only needed to send a few bytes occasionally.

LTE-M and NB-IoT attacked that from different directions. NB-IoT targeted extremely constrained devices needing low data volumes, deep coverage and long battery life. LTE-M offered greater throughput and mobility while keeping much of the power saving. These mattered enormously in Nordic applications: energy, utilities, environmental monitoring, tracking, infrastructure and remote equipment in cold or inaccessible places. A device that can run for years and report over a wide-area cellular network is extremely useful when sending an engineer to visit it costs far more than the device itself. By the time Wireless Logic acquired Com4 in January 2021, the company had already spent a decade building its Nordic M2M presence and was actively working with eSIM, NB-IoT and LTE-M. The acquisition was not the beginning of Com4's IoT story. It was another stage in it.

Wireless Logic, and why the Com4 name survived

For Wireless Logic the logic was clear. Com4 brought a strong Nordic position, its own dedicated core-network capability, an established M2M platform and a team with years of specialist experience. For Com4, joining a larger international IoT group meant access to wider networks, resources and reach.

What is interesting five years on is that Com4 still exists as an identifiable business and brand. It did not simply vanish into Wireless Logic. Instead it increasingly looks like a Nordic specialist operating with the backing and scale of a much larger global IoT group. That combination matters as the connectivity market grows more complicated, because what customers increasingly want is not a SIM. They want somebody to solve connectivity for the lifetime of a product.

Nokia comes home, underneath the network

In May 2025, Com4 announced it had selected Nokia to supply a new 5G Standalone Core for its global IoT services. This is not simply a network upgrade. A modern 5G SA core gives an operator a far more programmable foundation on which to build services, and Com4's deployment is designed to support generations of cellular technology from legacy networks through to 5G SA, including LTE-M, NB-IoT and RedCap, with SIM-level service control and multi-IMSI functionality.

That breadth is essential in IoT, because network generations do not replace one another neatly. A consumer might change smartphone every few years. A meter installed today may still be on a wall in 2040. IoT connectivity has to deal with technological archaeology as well as progress. And it creates a pleasing historical circle. A generation ago, Nokia provided the box attached to the customer's equipment. Today, Nokia provides the mobile core underneath the IoT connectivity provider. The name is familiar; its position in the architecture is completely different. Cellular has, in a strange way, come home.

Why machines outlive their networks, and why 5G does not replace LPWA

The Nordic 2G shutdown illustrates the problem perfectly. 2G is ancient by consumer standards, yet large numbers of alarms, meters, care systems and industrial devices have kept using it because they work. Replacing working equipment simply because a network generation is disappearing can be enormously expensive, which is why shutdown programmes have needed years of planning. The uncomfortable lesson for today's designer is that the communication technology inside a device may have a shorter useful life than the machine itself.

That problem sits behind many current technologies. Multi-network SIMs reduce dependence on one radio network. eUICC removes dependence on a removable plastic SIM. SGP.32 reduces dependence on one permanently provisioned operator profile. Satellite potentially reduces dependence on terrestrial coverage. The industry is gradually designing out the assumptions that caused problems in earlier generations.

It is also tempting to imagine IoT simply progressing 2G to 3G to 4G to 5G. It does not. A camera might need real bandwidth, a tracker needs mobility and moderate data, a water meter sends a few hundred bytes, a remote sensor cares almost entirely about battery life. Modern IoT therefore uses a portfolio.

RedCap, or Reduced Capability 5G, could become particularly significant over the next few years. Full 5G NR was designed for requirements far beyond most connected machines, which brings complexity, more expensive modems, more antennas and greater power draw. RedCap deliberately removes some of that. The result is still 5G, aimed at a middle class of devices that does not need maximum performance. For providers, it is another reason to invest in genuine 5G Standalone infrastructure rather than reselling access to somebody else's radio network. And it arrives just as the SIM itself is becoming programmable.

From removable SIM to eSIM to iSIM

The original Nokia and Ericsson terminals had something beautifully understandable inside them: a SIM card. Take the card out and the network identity came with it. That physical relationship survived remarkably well into IoT, and enormous numbers of industrial routers still contain removable 2FF, 3FF or 4FF SIMs.

But machines are different from phones. A SIM tray is a mechanical connection that occupies space, can be fitted incorrectly, can corrode and can be disturbed by vibration. Replacing the SIM in a device halfway up a wind turbine or inside a locked roadside cabinet is not convenient. That encouraged soldered MFF2 SIMs and eUICCs, and then iSIM, where the secure SIM capability is integrated further into the device silicon. Physically shrinking the SIM is only half the story, though. The much bigger change is the ability to change what is stored on it.

SGP.32: when the connectivity contract becomes software

SGP.32 is the GSMA's remote SIM provisioning architecture designed specifically for IoT. Its significance is easy to underestimate, because eSIM has existed for years. The important difference is the deployment model. Consumer eSIM was built around devices such as smartphones, where a person can scan a QR code, choose a network and interact with a screen. Industrial IoT often has none of those. A meter has no camera, a tracker may have no screen, a sensor could be buried under a road, and there may be 100,000 of them.

SGP.32 is designed around that reality. It lets compatible IoT eUICCs and devices receive and manage operator profiles remotely, with a server component, the eSIM IoT remote Manager or eIM, able to initiate profile changes without a person tapping a screen. That means the connectivity decision does not have to be fixed when hardware leaves the factory. A manufacturer could build one global hardware SKU, ship it, deploy it, then provision the appropriate profile according to where the device ends up, and later introduce another profile without opening the product. As of mid-2026, v1.2 remains the certification baseline while GSMA published v1.3 on 28 May 2026, so certification programmes and vendor documentation will catch up over the coming months rather than overnight.

It is worth being precise, because eSIM marketing easily becomes nonsense. IoT had provider choice, multi-network SIMs and roaming long before SGP.32. A Com4, Wireless Logic or other roaming IoT SIM could already reach multiple radio networks. SGP.32 has not suddenly invented resilience. The difference is at another layer: with a conventional roaming SIM, one connectivity provider profile can access several networks, but the provider relationship stays the same. SGP.32 potentially makes the device's relationship with the connectivity provider itself programmable.

Why SGP.32 is an opportunity for Com4, not a threat

At first glance SGP.32 sounds uncomfortable for a connectivity provider. If customers can remotely change provider, surely it becomes easier for them to leave? Potentially, yes. But that misses the other side of the equation. SGP.32 can also make it dramatically easier for connectivity specialists to become part of deployments that were previously locked to somebody else's SIM at manufacture.

Imagine a manufacturer building equipment for Europe, North America and Asia. Historically it might have to choose its SIM supplier early in production, produce regional variants, rely heavily on roaming or physically change SIMs later. SGP.32 means Com4 could become the appropriate profile for a device after the hardware already exists. That expands the addressable market. Connectivity becomes less about winning a SIM socket at the factory and more about earning the right to provide the best profile throughout the life of the product. The competitive question shifts from "who supplied the SIM?" to "who provides the best connectivity service for this device, in this country, at this point in its life?" That is a much healthier question, and it rewards providers that genuinely add value.

Com4's own view, put to IoTPortal for this piece, lands in the same place.

Look back at Com4's development and the progression is clear. It started as a specialist M2M operator in 2011, built its own dedicated core network and M2M platform through the 2010s rather than acting purely as a reseller, adopted LTE-M, NB-IoT and eSIM as devices demanded lower power and longer lifetimes, joined Wireless Logic for international scale in 2021, moved the conversation towards multi-network operation and international fleets, selected a Nokia 5G Standalone Core in 2025, and now positions for SGP.32 as remote profile provisioning becomes something manufacturers can design around commercially. Each step makes sense in the context of the one before it. Com4 has not suddenly discovered eSIM. It has progressively moved up the connectivity stack as the market has matured.

The questions worth asking about real SGP.32 deployments

This is where company marketing stops being enough and where the honest answers come from the people actually implementing the standard. The questions worth putting to any provider, Com4 included, are the ones a datasheet cannot answer.

How many deployments are genuinely live rather than still being evaluated? Are Nordic customers adopting faster than customers elsewhere, and which sectors are asking first? What are manufacturers actually trying to achieve: easier production, localisation, resilience, cost control or provider portability? Which module and eUICC combinations are working well, and where do interoperability problems still appear? What does the customer genuinely control, and could a customer move a deployed estate away from its current provider without changing the hardware? Where does iSIM fit, how soon does RedCap become commercially important, and when does NTN stop being a specialist satellite conversation and become another option inside an ordinary IoT connectivity platform? Those answers tell you far more about SGP.32's real maturity than another standards diagram.

Where this is heading: the module absorbs the device

There is a second transformation happening alongside the network story. The modem itself is becoming more capable. Early GSM terminals existed mainly to provide the radio connection. Modern smart modules can bundle the cellular modem, an application processor, memory and storage, GNSS, security hardware, an operating environment, eUICC support and short-range radios, with enough capability to run the actual IoT application on the module itself.

The architecture therefore collapses. Yesterday it ran sensor to controller or SBC to cellular router to physical SIM to operator. Increasingly it runs sensor and application to smart module to eUICC or iSIM to a remotely managed profile to whichever network is available, with the cloud contacted only when it is actually required. The modem has not disappeared. It has started absorbing the rest of the device. That is the same shift we explored in our smart module versus SBC versus router analysis, now visible in how a connectivity provider has to operate.

Satellite removes the last geographic assumption. Traditional cellular IoT has always assumed a terrestrial network is available. 3GPP non-terrestrial networks are gradually letting cellular technology extend beyond conventional towers, which is particularly interesting for Nordic maritime, remote infrastructure, energy and logistics work. Put NTN beside SGP.32 and the long-term picture becomes striking. A manufacturer could eventually build a device with one smart communications module, one eUICC or iSIM, multiple remotely manageable profiles, terrestrial LTE-M, NB-IoT, RedCap or 5G, and some form of satellite fallback. The device no longer cares which network, or even which physical type of network, carried yesterday's packet. It simply needs connectivity. That may be where the industry's original ambition finally ends up. Our Vodafone NTN deep-dive traces how the terrestrial and satellite worlds are starting to converge on exactly that model.

Twenty-five years of connected machines

The technology has changed beyond recognition. The problem has not. Somewhere there is a machine, and somebody needs it connected. Around 2000 the answer might have been a Nokia 22 or Ericsson F250m taking GSM and presenting it to a PBX. A few years later a Nokia 32 or Ericsson F251m could add data and computer connectivity. By 2009 an Ericsson W30 or W35 could provide 3G broadband, Ethernet, Wi-Fi and routing. Then M2M specialists began building connectivity platforms around fleets of devices. Com4 entered that market in 2011, built its own core capabilities, adopted LTE-M, NB-IoT and eSIM, became part of Wireless Logic, and selected Nokia for a 5G Standalone Core.

Now SGP.32 is changing one of the oldest assumptions in cellular M2M: that the network identity placed in a device when it is deployed stays there forever. There is something fitting about Nokia appearing at both ends of that timeline. The company that once supplied a GSM terminal at the edge of the network now supplies the programmable 5G core underneath a Nordic IoT operator. Meanwhile the little piece of plastic that once defined which mobile network a machine belonged to is gradually becoming software. The terminal became a modem, the modem became a router, the router became a computer, the SIM became an eUICC, the operator became a platform, and now the connectivity relationship itself is becoming programmable. Cellular has come home. It just took twenty-five years for the whole architecture to turn itself inside out.

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