LTE Cat-1 reuses the same chipsets and carrier infrastructure as Cat-4, so it can be used throughout the USA on Verizon and AT&T infrastructure. Cat-1 has significant market traction in the M2M industry. The specification was part of release eight and was later updated to support power saving mode and the single LTE antenna of Cat-0.

Cat-1 is considered a medium-speed LTE standard, meaning the downlink is 10 Mbps and the uplink is 5 Mbps. At these rates, it is still capable of transporting voice and video streams as well as M2M and IoT data payloads. By adopting the Cat-0 PSM and antenna design, Cat-1 operates at a with less power than traditional 4G-LTE. It is also significantly less costly to design radios and electronics. 

Cat-1 is currently the best choice in cellular connectivity for IoT and M2M devices with the widest coverage and lowest power. While significantly slower than regular 4G-LTE (10 Mbps versus 300 Mbps downlink), the radio can be designed to fall back to 2G and 3G networks as needed. Cat-1 reduces design complexity by incorporating time-slicing, which also reduces the speed considerably.

Cat-1 can be thought of as a complement to newer narrowband protocols, covered next.