Unlocking the Potential of IoT

New connectivity options for a networked world

 – By Duane Wald –

Internet of Things (IoT) has, over the past few years, become the hottest buzz word in the technology industry – driving connected devices and the applications they enable firmly into the spotlight.

Anyone who has been following IoT, even from the sidelines, can’t have missed the huge projections being bandied about:

• In 2011, Ericsson famously predicted that 50 billion devices will be connected by 2020,
• More recently, economists at GE forecast a $15 trillion addition to global GDP in 20 years,
• Gartner believes the technology will contribute $300 billion in incremental revenue for companies adopting the technology by 2020, and
• IDC values the total IoT market at $1.7 Trillion.

Although estimates vary widely, and debate about their accuracy remains spirited, one thing is absolutely clear, as analyst James Brehm puts it: the IoT market is already big and poised to become huge.

Why? Because the Internet of Things is creating new customer experiences and unparalleled economic value, while improving quality of life for countless people around the globe.

Moreover, there is not a single industry that won’t be affected to generate positive outcomes including: faster more effective emergency response; improved quality of life for the elderly or infirm; more efficient food production and distribution; safer, less congested highways, and a cleaner environment, among countless others.

So the only question that remains is: How? With what technologies? Leveraging what standards?

There are many ways to manage, control and collect information from assets, some wired and increasingly wireless. Those technologies are either managed or non-managed. Those technologies that address Short Range Communication, Personal Area Networks or Local Area Networks tend to be set up by the individual or enterprise with an emphasis on a CAPEX-only model, they buy it connect and manage it and enjoy economic, social or personal benefit. Longer range technologies tend to be managed, such as cellular, and as such involve a CAPEX-model upfront with an ongoing OPEX expense, which often cannot meet the business case of all assets that may benefit from connectivity.

The recent realization of LPWANs using ISM bands is disruptive as it turns this paradigm upside down for those who are prepared to invest CAPEX similar to a LAN or PAN to gain long range connectivity with devices more akin to Cellular for use cases where Short Range has been successful, such as sensor harvesting and remote control of industrial machinery.

New wireless technologies will not only drive the (now rather mundane) connection of things but also one’s own personal interaction with things and IoT network resources. Upcoming optical and sonic wireless technologies have the promise to provide contactless information transfer from a person or thing to another person or thing via the IoT to transparently enable and make available massive IoT network resources on demand. It represents just-in-time information flow for the consumer. The next phase of IoT is all about what we do with the connections that the first phase is now putting into place. Those eventual uses should feed back and drive what connections and connection types are being built out right now.

We’re now at the stage where cellular operators are voluntarily shutting down the earliest 2G networks and driving M2M/IoT customers to not only upgrade their physical devices, but also purchase bandwidth beyond what is generally needed for M2M and IIoT applications – 75% of which use less than one megabyte per month of data. The global carrier community is looking to variants of LTE and even forward years to 5G to address this disconnect. At the same time, a host of new Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) networking options are rolling out around the world.

LPWA solutions can run for years on batteries and operate in locations other technologies simply don’t reach. Plus, because many LPWA solutions operate on unlicensed spectrum, they deliver device connectivity at a fraction of the cost of cellular or even analog wireless solutions.

Among LPWA options available today, the leader has yet to emerge. Multiple options are making names for themselves. They include LoRaWAN, Sigfox and RPMA (Ingenu, formerly OnRamp Wireless). Each offers long range and long battery life, but they have important differences which impact their suitability to particular purposes. Moreover, there are new offerings coming out from the cellular carriers including LTE Categories 1 and M, as well as narrow-band IoT (5G).

Ultimately, we believe these technologies are very complimentary as each is suited to a subset of applications. Sigfox, for example, is ideal for simple sensor harvesting where its inherent limitations are acceptable due to the small size of the data being transferred and the need for optimal power efficiency. Ingenu offers a broader bit rate and tighter control, but requires antenna diversity at the edge due to the propagation of 2.4GHz creating an up-front CAPEX expense most suitable to very high-value assets where the additional complexity of integration can be effectively absorbed at the margin. LoRaWAN resides comfortably in the middle, providing higher bandwith and a faster data rate than Sigfox at a slightly shorter range and smaller link budget than Ingenue, but with a lower up front cost. And while Sigfox and Ingenue are both on the path to building ubiquitous nationwide networks, LoRa offers the ability, for those who prefer it, to deploy a private network to cover a campus, farm, refinery, etc. as well as the option to work with public network service providers.

As you can see, each available connecting technology has its pros and cons, but by understanding them, you are more likely to find the best for your specific purposes.  In fact, as technologies evolve and use cases become more sophisticated, blended connectivity solutions are likely to predominate the IoT space. When connecting your devices to the IoT, you will need to get used to working with several technologies at once for any given solution.

Duane Walde is VP and Managing Director EMEA and APAC, MultiTech Systems. Multitech Systems provides products and services to connect “things” to the Internet and deliver critical insight to businesses, governments and individuals. Such insights transform the way we live and work.

More than 25 million MultiTech products empoying a range of connectivity technologies perform critical functions for businesses around the globe.

Wireless Broadband Alliance Publishes IoT Interoperability White Paper

30 March 2017 – The Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) today launched a new white paper outlining the key priorities for operators and technology vendors, and the monetization potential for unlicensed technologies for IoT. The report, entitled ‘Internet of Things: New Vertical Value Chains & Interoperability’, reveals that 85% of companies have made IoT a key focus area over the last 12 months and have prioritized consumer and home, transportation and energy markets.

The report also highlights that companies consider IoT connectivity service, network interoperability and roaming are important for smart city and automotive applications.

The WBA analyzed the use of Next Generation Hotspot (NGH) based on PasspointTM certified Wi-Fi equipment to facilitate the adoption of IoT services using unlicensed radio technologies. Wi-Fi hotspots will be key for the development of some IoT applications and services. But while current provisioning and sign-up procedures assume display and input capabilities, IoT devices will likely be defined without such capabilities. NGH takes the established hotspot model and builds new levels of ease of discovery, security of connection and efficiency of service.  As a result, there is an opportunity to augment the on-boarding definition to enable simple IoT devices to be provisioned with NGH security credentials. This is an important initiative in making impactful strides towards commercial IoT deployments.

With certain IoT applications only sending a few bytes of data per day, monetization and revenue generation, especially with the use of unlicensed technologies, is a key focus of operators and technology vendors. When using unlicensed technology within IoT, monetization will be driven by non-traditional approaches, such as big data, etc. The WBA’s latest report shows that there are at least four different models emerging for the monetization of IoT:

• Hardware Based: Adding network connectivity to an existing or new product. This connectivity will be coupled with a web based tool (typically cloud based), providing basic management of the network connected device.
• Service Based: Transforming traditional product offerings into a recurrent service offering. Importantly, this transforms the customer relationship and their associated value to the business by allowing continued engagement over the lifetime of the service offering.
• Data Insight Based: Instead of the business to consumer service revenue, data revenue is focused on the business to business opportunity. Businesses can generate revenue by monetizing the suitably aggregated and anonymized data gathered from IoT.
• Ecosystem Model: Focus is not on the end-to-end product or service offering, but rather on delivering a shared platform to enable other ecosystem partners to monetize their unique capabilities.

These monetization strategies can be supported by different pricing models: One-time charges, pay-as-you-go, subscription models, pay-for-results, freemium models or transaction based models.

“With IoT services now beginning to take shape, the industry is starting to look at how revenues will be shared down the IoT value chain. The WBA’s 2020 vision seeks to look at the role of Wi-Fi and other unlicensed technologies to support IoT and smart city services, which is why our latest report outlines the opportunities for unlicensed technologies within IoT,” said Shrikant Shenwai, CEO of the Wireless Broadband Alliance (above). Companies are seeing that network interoperability and roaming in certain IoT use cases are important, and that existing authentication mechanisms based on NGH can be used to support IoT security.”

WBA explores the evolution of identities for IoT centric devices, moving up the stack to an association with applications and embedded identifiers. In this context, WBA have recently started a new effort that is defining a technical framework to address IoT service interoperability and roaming. To learn more and engage contact the WBA, please contact pmo@wballiance.com

The report, entitled ‘Internet of Things: New Vertical Value Chains & Interoperability’, is available to download here.

Source: Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA)

Pangea Hires Telefonica’s Head of IoT Wholesale

21 March 2017 - Pangea, a leading global M2M and IoT connectivity and solutions provider, have announced that Bernie McPhillips is set to join their organisation in April, marking the next phase in their Partner Programme strategy. McPhillips has achieved incredible success during his 11-year tenure with Telefonica, delivering great results in several senior level roles within O2 as Head of Wholesale Partners and more recently as Head of Telefonica’s IoT Authorised Distributor Channel.

McPhillips joins Pangea as Sales Director across the group and will have a key influence in supporting the rapid growth seen to date. Pangea will benefit from Bernie’s immense experience as well as his leadership qualities to deliver and accelerate the future growth of Pangea.

Dan Cunliffe, Managing Director of Pangea, explains “We are at a point within the IoT market opportunity, where exponential growth for our partners is upon us. Bernie’s understanding of the IoT market as well as his unprecedented record in working with partners will be a key driver in strategising and creating new valued opportunities for Pangea and our partner channel. Bernie has the critical experience of working closely with partners, so he’s perfectly placed to make certain that our partners are getting the best possible service and the most from their partnership with Pangea.”

Bernie commented “I am genuinely excited by the opportunity to join Pangea and help drive the business on to the next level. I was completely sold on the vision; Pangea’s incredible revenue growth and partner acquisition have exceeded the expectations for a start-up. Really importantly for me, Pangea’s success has been underpinned by a set of core brand values that governs everything that they do. They only operate through Channel, so there is zero conflict with a direct sales team and they put the Partners at the heart of everything that they do. The sales team works ruthlessly to these values to ensure that they go above and beyond to make certain that their partners are getting a world class experience from every interaction with Pangea.”

Cunliffe went on to add, “Pangea have accelerated from being a start-up to a fully-fledged global IoT ecosystem provider with a near six-fold increase in revenue and acquiring over 80 valued partners. In an ever-expanding world of data we believe that everything should be connected, whether it’s devices, appliances, vehicles, and perhaps most importantly, people. With a combined 55 years’ experience in partnering within the telecommunications industry, our award winning ecosystem of connectivity, devices, and solutions make us the channel’s choice for IoT.”

Source: Pangea