Microsoft is retiring Azure IoT Central, AWS ends Greengrass V1 on 7 October, Orange is switching off 2G. The devices built on them are still in the field.

The piece of the week, because it shows what an end date looks like when it arrives. On 23 September Microsoft announced that new Azure IoT Central applications can no longer be created; existing ones continue "as-is" through 20 September 2029 and are "no longer available" after that. The blog post of 25 September gives the reason as concentrating investment on a "unified, Azure-native platform rather than a fixed application experience". The recommended path runs through IoT Hub, the Device Provisioning Service and Microsoft Fabric; Azure Device Registry, which is to take over the device inventory, is still "in preview". In February 2024 Microsoft’s Kam VedBrat called a system message saying IoT Central would end in March 2027, with no new applications from April 2024, "not accurate" and "presented in error". He pointed to the standard process of three years’ notice, and that is almost exactly what existing applications now get. For equipment shipped this year that stays in the field for a decade or more, three years’ notice means a migration nobody priced in, years before end of life. Whoever builds a connected product buys dependencies with an end date that someone else sets.

The same pattern at AWS, one step further along. Above the maintenance policy for AWS IoT Greengrass Version 1 sits a banner: "On October 7th, 2026, AWS will discontinue support for AWS IoT Greengrass Version 1." Since October 2025 AWS has listed it among services "entering sunset". The same page says what follows: once the last phase ends, devices running the Core software v1.x "won’t be able to connect to AWS Cloud services to operate." The software has been in that last phase, "extended life", since 30 June 2023, and it gets no security patches there. A successor has existed since December 2020, so there was no shortage of notice. Further down the same page, though, it still says there is "no plan to stop supporting" the Core software v1.x, that the endpoints remain available "until further notice", and that AWS will give twelve months’ notice. Anyone who looks for their platform’s end date in the section about end dates finds none.

Beneath the cloud is the network, and it has a date too. Orange has been switching off 2G in mainland France step by step since March, finishing in three waves: Nice on 22 September, 44 departments on 6 October, another 43 on 20 October; 3G follows in 2028. On 24 September the French regulator Arcep published what still depends on it. The 1.7 million in its headline are all devices that can only use 2G, phones and machines together. At the end of June the four major operators had 2.01 million M2M SIM cards in devices that can only use 2G, or only 2G and 3G, 7.7 per cent of all M2M cards, not counting those carmakers fit in vehicles. Of those, 620,000 can only use 2G. Arcep’s examples are connected alarm and surveillance systems, personal emergency alarms and the emergency phones in lifts. In the second quarter the number of 2G-only M2M cards fell by 160,000, or 20.5 per cent, faster than for phones. At 160,000 a quarter, some 400,000 would remain at the end of October, across all four networks. Whoever chose the module in a lift alarm years ago also decided, back then, who has to replace it now.

And the module itself. Satyajit Sinha of IoT Analytics counts 15 per cent more cellular IoT modules shipped in the first half, and, after four quarters of decline, average prices rising again, about 2.5 per cent year on year. Largely because of memory and other component costs: one module vendor reported that a high-end DDR3 component cost roughly seven times what it did in the first quarter. An unnamed executive at a module vendor describes lead times for LPWA and Cat 1 bis modules that went from around 12 weeks to 16 and now close to 22. Of the modules shipped outside China, about 59 per cent now come from Chinese vendors, against about 35 in 2018; Quectel alone holds about 38 per cent there. Semtech, which bought Sierra Wireless in 2023, has agreed to sell its module business to Compal for 62 million dollars. The supplier on the bill of materials has a say in when firmware for the module arrives, at what price it can be reordered, and whether it will still exist in ten years.

Finally, the Data Act. Since 12 September, Article 3(1) applies to connected products placed on the market after that date: product data and related service data, with the metadata needed to use them, must be accessible "by default", easily, securely, free of charge and machine-readable, and "where relevant and technically feasible, directly" to the user. Since September 2025 the seller has already had to say, before a purchase, rental or lease contract, what data the product generates, whether it stores them on the device or on a remote server, and how the user retrieves them. The DIHK’s overview says devices must be designed so that the data are "directly and automatically available". The regulation requires direct access only where relevant and technically feasible; otherwise the data holder makes the data available under Article 4 "on the basis of a simple request". The duty attaches to the day the product is placed on the market. How long the path to the data lasts once the cloud behind it is switched off in 2029, it does not say. That is decided by the architecture, and the architecture is fixed before the first unit ships.