This probably has to do with the historic split between 2G/3G technologies among the major cellular carriers in the US. In the US if you want or need true nati

This probably has to do with the historic split between 2G/3G technologies among the major cellular carriers in the US. In the US if you want or need true nationwide coverage (say you are selling a retail IoT device and your customers expect it to work nearly anywhere) you pretty much have to go with AT&T or Verzion and switching a 2G or 3G device between them is impossible. This gives those companies a lot of power to dictate to customers what technologies they can use with their networks. Since LTE is the lowest common denominator technology between all carriers (and LTE is the only cellular technology with hardware that supports all cellular frequency bands in the US) the cellular market in the US is being pushed very strongly in an all-LTE direction. With the inclusion of Cat-M1 and Cat-NB1 modes in LTE release 13[0], LTE will soon be usable even for low-power IoT devices. AT&T and Verizon are already racing to support those standards on their networks.[1] [0] https://www.qualcomm.com/invention/technologies/lte/lte-iot https://www.qualcomm.com/invention/technologies/lte/lte-iot [1] http://www.fiercewireless.com/tech/verizon-at-t-both-claim-lte-cat-m-firsts-for-internet-things http://www.fiercewireless.com/tech/verizon-at-t-both-claim-l...