Cloud

Inside AT&T's industrial IoT logistics play

By Mitch Wagner Jul 8, 2026 5:58pm

AT&T is bundling technology from startup Wiliot into a logistics business, adding kitting, staging and field installation to network connectivity
One shipping customer put Wiliot's tags on thousands of trailers, drastically cutting property losses
Wiliot's cloud provides predictive analytics and AI, flagging at-risk perishables and answering plain-language queries

Telcos like to talk about going beyond mere connectivity to find new revenue streams. AT&T isn't just talking.

AT&T is leveraging its partnership with IoT startup Wiliot for an industrial logistics operation that reaches well beyond selling connectivity. Across thousands of loading docks, the carrier now ships pre-assembled sensor hardware, dispatches field installers and prioritizes supply-chain data on its network. AT&T supplies the plumbing enterprises need to track physical goods in real time.

Previously, we described the collaboration as a bet on "physical AI", which is true, but it's a lot more than that. Wiliot makes the sensors and data software. AT&T supplies nearly everything else required to attach the technology to the physical economy and keep data moving.

The sensor is the foundation

Wiliot's core product is a battery-free Bluetooth Low Energy sensor called an IoT Pixel: a chip, antenna and capacitor molded into a label that can be attached to inventory such as a pallet, crate or carton. The Pixel reports location, temperature, humidity and light exposure to the cloud.

A Wiliot Pixel sensor on a cardboard box on an assembly line — Wiliot's key technology is a Bluetooth Low Energy sensor called an IoT Pixel, built into a label that can be affixed to a cardboard box or other property. (Wiliot)

The Pixel is powered by ambient radio energy, including Wi-Fi and cellular signals, with standard Bluetooth waves on the roadmap for next-generation tags. That harvested energy charges the tag enough for it to transmit a signal carrying its condition data. A key differentiator is that the capacitor holds the charge — while an RFID tag, QR code or barcode can only deliver data when it's in line of sight of a reader, a Pixel can stay powered for up to 45 minutes.

The Pixel harvests energy from sub-1 GHz RF and transmits on 2.4 GHz — that's the Bluetooth Low Energy part.

AT&T provides logistics to deploy Pixels to customer sites, bring data to the cloud and put it to work.

"The market is huge for this. Almost every retail or manufacturing customer that we talked to has some interest in making this part of their business," said Lee Wagner, area VP for AT&T's Connected Solutions (he's no relation to the author). "Historically, they haven't been able to solve this. The two reasons are cost and battery, and the Wiliot solution, along with what we do with them, has solved both."

Multiple services, only one is the network

AT&T brings several capabilities to a Wiliot deployment, and only one is network connectivity, Wagner said. The telco provides network prioritization, systems integration and a staging-and-kitting function that assembles ready-to-install hardware and sends installers across the U.S. and into Europe.

Corporate headshot of a man in a jacket and tie

AT&T's Lee Wagner (Wiliot)

The kitting operation preprovisions gear so it activates on power-up, arriving as a single box and self-configuring without a technician touching software. AT&T runs it as a supply-chain operation in its own right, moving equipment to sites nationwide, the same distribution machine it uses for consumer devices such as iPhones and Kindles.

AT&T uses its IoT Network Intelligence service to prioritize supply-chain traffic above other transmissions, so tracking data arrives reliably even under congestion. Bundled together — connectivity, prioritization, integration and physical deployment — the package moves AT&T up the value stack, from commoditized data transport toward the higher-margin work of instrumenting other companies' operations.

Results in the field

One deployment shows the model at scale. A shipping company AT&T and Wiliot decline to name is running millions of Wiliot tags across thousands of tractor-trailers at thousands of locations and has been doing so for more than a year.

The system tracks both the freight and the shipper's own reusable roll cages — the wheeled mesh carts used to move inventory around a warehouse. Those carts are expensive and easily lost. The company had been losing more than 20% of them a year as they left facilities and never came back, said Amir Khoshniyati, a VP at Wiliot; tagging the cages lets it find and recover them. The tags also automate the handoff between shipper and receiver, Khoshniyati said, confirming when a shipment leaves and when it arrives, without a manual check.

Legacy systems couldn't do this affordably, according to Khoshniyati. RFID and vision-based tracking need costly fixed hardware and clear line of sight, he said, making full-trailer coverage hard to justify. Battery-free Pixel tags, paired with lower-cost readers, extend visibility across a facility and in transit.

The data and AI layer

Wiliot's cloud runs predictive analytics on the incoming stream of data from the Pixel devices, flagging anomalies such as a perishable pallet dwelling too long on a hot dock and signaling when it must be refrigerated or pulled from sale. An AI agent lets users query the data in plain language — where an asset is, when it will arrive, whether it has been refrigerated — and customers can build custom applications on top, feeding warehouse-management and ERP systems through APIs.

For AT&T, supply-chain sensing is one piece of a broader physical-AI strategy that also spans robotics and camera-based quality inspection developed through its Nvidia partnership. The common thread is using the network to turn physical-world data into automated decisions.

Pipeline and competition

The customer pipeline reaches beyond shipping. AT&T points to a large restaurant operation, a large package-delivery company and a convenience-store chain at various stages of adoption, with pharmaceutical cold chains a natural fit given the tags' temperature sensing, Wagner said.

Wiliot has a high-profile customer reference: A deal with Walmart, announced in October, to deploy millions of Pixels throughout the retailer's supply chain, covering 4,600 Walmart Supercenters, Neighborhood Markets, and over 40 distribution centers.

Rivals are chasing the logistics opportunity. Verizon markets its own IoT asset-tracking portfolio and T-Mobile is pushing physical AI at the network edge with Nvidia. Wiliot competes in a crowded ambient IoT field against RFID incumbents and energy-harvesting rivals, and has formed alliances — including with RFID inlay maker Tageos — to push battery-free sensing toward an industry standard.