GSMA’s 8th Mobile IoT Summit

By Abraham Joseph -

This year, like last, I kicked off MWC with a visit to the GSMA’s Mobile IoT Summit, now in its 8^th iteration. This event has turned out to be one of the best places at the go to catch up with the great and the good of IoT and at the same time keep abreast of developments in carrier 5G strategies.

This year, I managed to miss the keynotes but caught most of the panel Mobile IoT Business Opportunity and Maximising Value.

Panel members from left to right:

• Amaia White, Senior Project Manager (Moderator)
• Owen Moore, Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder, BeWhere
• Marie Hogan, Head of Broadband and IoT Business Area Networks, Ericsson
• Ankur Bhan, Global Head of Worldwide IoT Network Grid (WING), Nokia
• Dr. Felix Wunderer, VP IoT – Products & Service, T-Systems

In short, the panel saw lots of opportunities across many verticals in every region. But there are challenges too, including business cases, skill sets and device prices.

In the run up to this year’s MWC, the GSMA published a new study valuing the mobile economy at $3.9 trillion and  forecasting a tripling of the number of global IoT connections to 25 billion and a quadrupling of global IoT revenues to $1.1 trillion by 2025.

Other highlights from the report include:

• The number of 5G connections will reach 1.4 billion by 2025 – 15 per cent of the global total¹. By this point, 5G is forecast to account for around 30 per cent of connections in markets such as China and Europe, and around half of the total in the US;

• An additional 1.4 billion people will start using the mobile internet over the next seven years, bringing the total number of mobile internet subscribers globally to 5 billion by 2025 (more than 60 per cent of the world’s population).

Exhibitors at the event included Huawei, AT&T, Sierra Wireless, Gemalto, BeWhere and Quectel. I spent some time with Huawei, who had the following insightful chart highlighting the opportunity spaces they see for the various cellular IoT technologies.

Ring of Security

By Abraham Joseph -

Have you ever found yourself in a tricky situation, and wished you could signal someone – anyone – surreptitiously? Would you like to offer this protection to a loved one or friend? In that case, NIMB has a solution for you. It consists of a smart safety ring and an associated service that is set up and managed via a smartphone application.

The ring uses a Sierra wireless module and works anywhere there is an LTE-M or NB-IoT network service. It does not rely on the mobile phone for connectivity. It can operate for up to 2 weeks on a single charge.

I caught up with and Kathy Romanovskaya, Co-founder NIMB (above) and Nicolas Damour, Director of Technology Partnership Development at Sierra Wireless (below) at the GSMA’s eighth global IOT summit yesterday. Both were keen to show off the ring.

NIMB launched the service in the US, where it is offered in conjunction with AT&T. The ring is free with subscription plans starting at $23.95 per month.

The ring can be ordered in a range of sizes. It triggers an alert when a button on its stem is pressed. In the case of the US service, the alert can be to the emergency services, a number of predetermined contacts or nearby NIMB wearers.

The ring has a broad range of applications in personal safety and security. It turns out, one of the first enquiries the team received was from a company that wished to provide safety and security for its dancers. In this particular case, the key requirement was that the solution was inconspicuous when ‘worn’ by the otherwise naked dancers.

Less obvious, perhaps, are the advantages the ring can offer in situations where legal recourse is required. As Romanovskaya points out, if a sex-attack victim was unable to speak, or otherwise incapacitated, but able to activate the ring, it will be much more difficult for the attacker to argue that consent was given. Moreover, there will be a timestamp, date stamp and geographic location for the incident.

We did not discuss the genesis of the idea. However, Romanovskaya’s profile indicates that she had been the victim of a vicious knife attack.

Romanovskaya and Co-founder Leo Bereschansky are looking for partners outside the US. They and Sierra Wireless and will be demonstrating the smart safety ring at MWC in the GSMA Innovation City, Hall 4, Stand 4A30.

Is This The Most Sustainable Phone in the World?

By Abraham Joseph -

Hot from paying £45 to upgrade the battery on my iPhone 6S, I headed to MWC to check out the latest tech. Did I hear you say luddite? How dare you! I’ll have you know that I have it all worked out. Dutifully, I already bought a leather case in anticipation of upgrading to the iPhone X when Apple forces me. Oops, I meant the XS. Actually, I’m hoping that it will be the iPhone 11 or 12 and that they'll keep the same form factor by the time I succumb.

Like many others, I have method to my ludditism, or madness if you prefer. Aside from the convenience of the 3.5 mm jack for a favourite headphone (or for that matter any old headphone/earphone in an emergency) versus having a dongle in every jacket, bag and family car, plus  the inconvenience of not being able to listen to music while charging, many of us question the necessity (and expense) of upgrading, when the current tech is perfectly useful for our needs.

Tthere is, of course, a broader, much more serious issue at stake resulting from the incessant rush to upgrade and obsolescence: the impact on the planet.

What if it were possible to keep your phone and just upgrade specific components as needed? A new processor, a new camera or a new screen when the need arises. Yes, I know, there have been several attempts at building modular phones in the past, and none has taken hold. However, there is such a thing as miss-timing of market entry.

With growing concerns about climate change and other environmental impacts, might now be the right time for a modular phone? Carsten Waldek, Founder and CEO SHIFT, GmbH (above) thinks so. I bumped into him at Showstoppers at Mobile World Congress.

“This is the most modular phone in the world”, he says, as he pulls various components apart while the phone is still running.

Carsten is on a mission. Inspired, he says, by a trip he made to the Democratic Republic of the Congo several years ago. There, he saw the grave damage that was being done to the environment.

He promises to channel all profits from SHIFT into sustainability and social projects. Also, he wishes to inspire the market to adopt more sustainable practices through his inventions. Hence SHIFT in very open with its intellectual property and will not stop others from copying its designs.

SHIFT has designed ten phone models. However, only two are available currently: the SHIFT 6m and the SHIFT 5me. The former costs €555 and the latter €444.

SHIFTPHONES phones are based on the Android 8 (Oreo) operating system and are available either in a 'light' version (i.e. wthout Google Services) or in a 'G' version (with Google GMS certified). Additional OS options are under Development.

Perfect Entertainment on the Road to Mobility as a Service

By Abraham Joseph -

At the ConnecteDriver and Vehicle show in Brussels a couple of weeks ago, I took a break a break from the excitement over mobility as a service to pick the brains of Benoit Joly Chief Sales & Marketing Officer, Connected Mobility & Autonomous Services at Group Renault (right).

In September last year, the Alliance Group (Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi) agreed to partner with Google to use the latter’s Android platform as the foundation of their next generation entertainment systems.

“We are focusing on returning the joy of car ownership and use to the driver,” he says, going on to explain that Renault's new entertainment platform is focused on experience and services and that the company’s strategy is to focus on creating value for customers based on the various services derived from connected vehicles.

He says that the decision to use Android was driven by the need to ensure that the Alliance companies could build their next generation entertainment systems on a standard lifestyle platform. They saw customers’ digital lives and connected cars merging, and in order to facilitate easier interconnection, it would be useful if the technologies were similar.

Now, using Android enables them to connect various solutions together in a much smoother way.

He anticipates a relatively seamless integration with customers’ existing lifestyle technologies such as assistants from Google, Amazon and Microsoft.

First, customers want to get the car connected with their assistants so that when they are at home, they can request the location of the car, or issue instructions to the car, e.g. to turn on the heating before a journey. Similarly, when they’re in the car, they want to access their home assistants to get relevant information or issue commands to their home automation systems.

And what about security? This is a very important topic that they tackle at the Alliance level, he says. “We have a 360° strategy for security. It tackles security in the cloud, in the car down to the lowest level, in the entertainment system and in the communications system.”

He adds, "Over the last couple of years, we have been building a very strong cybersecurity capability and now we have an army of experts that take care of security. Also, we are working with leading players in cybersecurity."

What does he think about the conference’s hot topic – mobility as a service – and what will happen to the vehicle manufacturing industry when MaaS takes off?  “It will be an ecosystem play,” he says, regarding the former. “No one has or will have all the pieces.” Regarding the latter, he points out that whatever happens, for the foreseeable future lots of cars will be made.

IoT Insights will publish a full interview with Benoit next month.