According to new research from Counterpoint, more than 10% of the world’s drones will support eSIMs and advanced cellular connectivity by 2022.  

“Operators are quite serious about LTE capable drones and are working with the DFS (German Aviation Authority), EASA (European Aviation Safety Agency), FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) to leverage LTE connectivity to make drones visible to air traffic controllers, thereby improving aerial safety especially, for TBVOS (True Beyond Visual Line of Sight) commercial applications,” wrote Anshika Jain, an Analyst with Counterpoint Technology Market Research, on the company’s blog. “LTE connectivity in drones is also a big ARPU play for operators to enable real-time data transfer and analytics. The upcoming commercial use cases would require low latency and high-transmission range which can be enabled by a connectivity solution instead of Wi-Fi.”