Exploding cellular IoT data traffic from agentic AI and remote vision will require infrastructure scaling to meet workload demands.
According to Omdia, data traffic generated by cellular IoT connections will reach 218.6 exabytes (EB) by 2035. This volume of information is primarily driven by the corporate need to extract operational efficiency and secure new revenue streams through the continuous analysis of physical assets.
Bridging the gap between physical machinery and digital twins requires pipelines capable of supporting these intense data streams without saturating core networks. The expansion of connected hardware forces industrial leaders to re-evaluate their entire communication architecture, prioritising low-latency edge computing to handle workloads that older radio networks cannot accommodate.
Heavy workloads on mobility networks
The largest share of this impending cellular data surge originates from the automotive sector. Forecasts show automotive data traffic expanding from 30.7 EB in 2025 to 135.4 EB by 2035.
The integration of advanced infotainment systems within newer vehicle models, coupled with high consumer uptake of 5G-reliant services, serves as the primary engine for this consumption. Video and audio streaming, alongside heavy firmware over-the-air (OTA) updates, dominate the use cases within this vertical.
Alexander Thompson, Senior Analyst for IoT at Omdia, said: “The rising number of vehicles with smart features, particularly infotainment, will cause cellular IoT data traffic to boom over the next decade. Other video-based use cases will also generate significant amounts of data.”
Commercial vehicles and autonomous transport units operate as mobile data centres. Pushing a highly complex OTA update to a fleet of three hundred electric delivery vans simultaneously requires guaranteed bandwidth. Packet loss or latency during a firmware upgrade can sideline assets, disrupting precisely timed logistics schedules and degrading total yield.
Expanding compute to the operational edge
Following the automotive industry, transport and logistics are positioned to become the next dominant sector for cellular IoT data utilisation. All other combined industries will account for less than 29% of the total traffic volume from 2025 onwards.
This uneven distribution indicates that mobility and external logistics are consuming network capacity at a pace that static manufacturing facilities must carefully monitor. Utility providers and plant operators competing for bandwidth may need to provision private 5G networks, working with vendors like Ericsson or Nokia to ensure their internal automation metrics remain unaffected by external network congestion.
Andrew Brown, Practice Lead for IoT at Omdia, commented: “While cellular IoT data traffic remains dominated by use cases that require mobility (such as automotive and logistics), emerging trends like remote vision (which enables cameras to be added in a wide range of devices, from delivery robots to industrial machinery), and agentic AI (driving growth in peer-to-peer machine traffic) are increasing demand for greater edge processing power and accelerating 5G adoption.
“Together, these trends are creating additional data traffic demand that did not exist several years ago.”
The introduction of agentic AI and remote vision directly impacts how hardware is deployed on the factory floor. A localised computing approach – with ruggedised edge servers – preserves backhaul bandwidth and ensures machines can negotiate physical obstacles in real-time, rather than waiting for server-side verification.
The physical deployment of these systems shows heavy regional concentration. Asia and Oceania accounted for 50.6 percent of all global cellular IoT data traffic in 2025. This heavy concentration is driven by an established culture of early technology adoption and a massive existing footprint of video cameras.
Supply chain leaders can treat the region as a live preview for scaling physical hardware. Wiring up a dozen cameras for a site test is simple. Pushing that same gear across fifty regional distribution centres often fractures older IT/OT networks.
See also: How Viasat is providing a blueprint for the industrial edge
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