How Telcos Can Play a Prominent Role & Monetize the IoT

Introduction:

With extraordinary potential, impact and influence, the Internet of Things (IoT) promises to make a lot of money and improve efficiencies for many different industries. At the IoT Developers Conference, Ericsson cited a Gartner Group prediction of “$1.9 Trillion value-add IoT revenue across industry sectors in 2020.” Indeed, IoT is one of the hottest tech topics trending now, but one that is marked by ultra hype, confusion and chaos. We don’t propose to sort that out anytime soon. Instead, our focus here is what telcos could possibly do to participate in the IoT boom.

To prevent being just a “dumb pipe” for connectivity between “things” and the “cloud” we think there are real opportunities for telcos to make money on IoT. Wireless telcos certainly have a great incentive to do so, as they continue to upgrade their networks (from 3G, to 4G-LTE, to LTE Advanced, to 5G?) which are then used by Over the Top (OTT) Internet video and Internet music/radio companies. They’ve also missed out on all the mobile apps revenue, even though their networks must have enough speed and robustness to support a never ending stream of mobile apps.

This article, based on presentations at the IoT World and IoT Developers conferences, reviews several IoT options for carriers. There is no time, space or incentives to analyze or compare any of the below described items. Please contact the author if you’re interested in a consulting arrangement to do exactly that.

Overview of IoT Opportunities for Telcos:

We believe there are several important areas for telcos to participate in IoT and derive revenue from it:

1. Provisioning, Management & Connectivity platform:

Such a “purpose built” platform has been around for at least 7 years- since the first days of Machine to Machine (M2M) communications from companies like AT&T and Sprint who talked about them in a 2010 IEEE ComSocSCV seminar/workshop.

BT’s Connectivity platform is described below along with their unique IoT Data Storage platform.

Ericsson offers an IoT/M2M Device Connection platform they’re selling to wireless telcos.  It’s said to be “a cloud service enabling operators to offer connectivity management to enterprise customers. It enables operators to address new revenue streams from a vast variety of devices while simplifying the process and reducing the cost of connecting them.”

Start-ups like Asavie and Infiswift have developed network agnostic Connectivity platforms, positioned at the network provider edge, to provide functionality like access authentication, aggregation, security, public key encryption, Directory Name Server (DNS), service creation options (e.g. QoS), real-time monitoring with diagnostics and other critical networking functions.   Asavie claims they have 20 network operators using their PassBridge platform,  including Vodafone, AT&T, Telenor, and Telefonica. Here’s an illustration of PassBridge’s functionality and position in the network, provided by Asavie’s Keith O’Bourne at the IoT World Conference:

2. Application Enablement Platform for IoT:

Ericsson has entered this business with a variety of Application Enablement platforms for apps using data from “things.”

“Smart metering as a service, User & IoT data analytics, and diversifying cellular for massive IoT deployment” were all announced at the 2016 CES, according to Samita Chakrabarti, Principal Engineer, at Ericsson.

However, it remains to be seen whether network operators will buy and resell applications from Ericsson or if they’ll be sold directly to business/industrial customers as a cloud based service(s).

3. A new wireless or wired network that connects ‘Things’ to connectivity/management platforms, the Internet and data centers.

Independent of wireless or wireline connectivity, a key issue for many IoT applications will be to select either a best effort or managed service (with QoS and SLAs). Another issue might be a data plan for constant connectivity with possible bursts of traffic vs infrequent, low duty cycle, low bandwidth communications.

A] Several new narrowband/low power wireless access networks are optimized for IoT devices. It’s often referred to as NB-IoT and LPWA (or LPWAN), respectively. There are many choices here, but the main one’s are:

• LTE Category 1, M1, M2 (Verizon, many other LTE operators);
• LoRa WAN (Orange, SK Telecom);
• SIGFOX (new 2G type of wireless WAN being deployed in France, Belgium, US, etc); and
• Wi-Fi HaLow™ (WiFi Alliance designation for products incorporating IEEE 802.11ah technology operating <1GHz)

Needless to say, there are a plethora of standards bodies and forums working on new connectivity standards or tweaking existing standards for IoT applications. This is illustrated in the diagram below:

B] A wireline network for IoT device connectivity is also possible. Some choices are:

• Power Line Communications (PLCs)– a communication technology that enables sending data over existing power cables. A wide range of power-line communication technologies are needed for different applications, ranging from home automation to Internet access which is often called broadband over power lines (BPL). Most PLC technologies limit themselves to one type of wire (such as premises wiring within a single building), but some can cross between two levels (for example, both the distribution network and premises wiring). Typically transformers prevent propagating the signal, which requires multiple technologies to form very large networks. Various data rates and frequencies are used in different situations.
• Industrial Ethernet – use of standard Ethernet protocols with rugged connectors and extended temperature switches in an industrial environment, for automation or process control.
• Automotive Ethernet – for the Connected Car.

4. Data Storage Platform (“Data Hub”) for Apps utilizing ‘Thing’ data:

This is British Telecom’s (BT’s) intriguing IoT value added initiative – a Data Hub which complements its Connectivity Platform (described generically in 1. above and specifically in the Network Operator Platforms for IoT section below). The heart of the Data Hub is a machine readable data repository that’s populated by different types of “things,” using a variety of data formats. That data can be read, processed and analyzed by “big data/analytics” software via a common API, independent of the data format.

BT’s concept of a Data Hub and IoT Ecosystem is show in the diagram below:

Presenting at the IoT World conference, BT’s John Davies, PhD asserted what this author has been saying for years: IoT interoperability is essential to prevent a fragmented market. Citing McKinsey & Company, John said that “Interoperability was essential to unlock 40% of the $11 Trillion potential value of the IoT. It’s a requirement for (IoT data) hubs to inter-operate.”

The Hypercat specification is a hypermedia catalog format designed for exposing information about the Internet of Things assets over the web.  It was developed by a consortium of organizations, including BT and IBM among others.

“Hypercat will drive Data Hub interoperability via a standardized machine readable data format. It also facilitates automatic discovery and retrieval of data,” Mr. Davies said during his IoT World presentation.

Note:  This author believes that “standards” are developed and ratified via official standards making bodies- not by consortiums or forums.

The key role of IoT data aggregation from BT’s perspective is illustrated in this graphic:

Caveat Emptor: Most, if not all of the “thing” data collected/stored will be subject to “big data/analytics.” Almost every “big data” vendor claims they do some form of analytics in their IoT product/solution/platform. But exactly what they do, and how they do it is unclear from their presentations, sales pitches, and even their documentation.

Network Operator Platforms for IoT (from BT):

1. Connectivity Platform functions include:

• Provisioning and service creation
• Data processing at the edge
• Security and privacy at the edge
• Policy and privacy management between edge and hub
• Edge/hub trade-offs
• Device management: Is the device on? Is it sending the kind of data expected?

2. Data hubs aggregate and expose data in a uniform way:

• Make it easier for data providers and app developers – maximize value of data, break silos, lower barrier to entry
• BT has claimed they’ve demonstrated the validity of their approach. By working with all players in the ecosystem, the company has developed and deployed a range of IoT use cases in Retail, Smart Cities, Smart Transport and other areas.

Conclusions:

Today’s proprietary methods of IoT data communications, interfacing with islands of technologies and isolated applications will need to evolve into convergence to common communication standards for PAN, LAN and wireless WANs. Ericsson and this author suggest an IP Infrastructure and a LPWAN based on LTE Category M1 or M2.

There are an incredible number of  many wireless PAN and wireless/wireline LAN offerings which we refer to as Wireless LAN Connectivity Spaghetti.  There are also way Too Many Wireless WAN (LPWAN) “Standards” & Specs.  The PAN/LAN/WAN connectivity arrangements must be selected by different industry verticals or IoT applications, based on their needs for range, rate and power dissipation/battery life.