Search Results

Search results for: cellular technologies

IoT on the edge: avoid IoT network overload

Had Mark Twain been reporting on the rise of the Internet of Things, he might have commented wryly that ‘the reports of its growth have been greatly exaggerated’, writes Carsten BrinkSchulte, the chief executive of Core Network Dynamics. (more…)

Read more

June 7, 2016

Posted by: George Malim

Passive Wi-Fi – the key to the smart city puzzle?

The difficulty when creating something new is that there is no template to follow, writes Narayan Menon, the CTO of XCellAir. No flat pack manual that takes you through the trickier parts step by step. (more…)

Read more

May 10, 2016

Posted by: George Malim

Weightless redefines LPWAN performance

Cambridge, UK, Taipei City, Taiwan – December 15, 2015 – The Weightless SIG today announced availability of feature-rich Weightless-P technology tailored to deliver on the promises of premium ubiquitous wide area IoT connectivity: fully acknowledged 2-way wireless link, adaptive data rates up to 100kbps, scalable cellular-inspired network technology to deliver higher capacity than existing LPWAN technologies and on unique features.

(more…)

Read more

April 19, 2016

Posted by: IoT global network

IoT privacy must be built around the individual

A couple of years ago, Europe told Google to allow people to opt out of their search results, striking a blow for privacy. It was an important step, writes Juan Carlos Zuñiga, the principal engineer at InterDigital, but the increasing role of internet technology in our daily lives makes the broader matter of privacy more important than ever – and one that is growing in importance. The Internet of Things raises unique challenges. (more…)

Read more

March 15, 2016

Posted by: George Malim

The reality distortion field of IoT
By 2020, Gartner predicts that 20.8 billion connected things will be in use worldwide, across consumer and enterprise use cases, writes Mike Crooks, the head of Innovation at thr Mubaloo Innovation Lab. This year alone, Gartner expects 5.5 million new things will get connected every day, leading to services spending around IoT reaching $235 billion by the year end.
Everywhere you look, there is a vast amount of hype about what IoT delivers, where the market is heading and what can be achieved. We’d be forgiven for thinking that IoT is already a complete world changer, that is fundamentally changing the dynamics of how we live and work. 

In some cases, of course, it’s true. The average person may never be aware of the impact that IoT is having.

We live in a world that is more connected than ever. The farming industry is going through a large change, where its equipment is becoming ever smarter and more autonomous. Cars are starting to have autonomous capabilities, with the ability to self diagnose and trigger maintenance alerts. Smart thermostats are being installed in an increasing number of homes. All the big technology companies are turning more attention, and more money into the entire IoT ecosystem.

Yet, this would be masking over the reality of IoT. IoT has the potential to help us drive improvements in virtually every aspect of the way in which we live and work; but questions remain as to whether the world needs a tweeting toaster or a smart wardrobe.

In reality, how can we be close to the vision of IoT, when so much of the world and so many companies still aren’t properly utilising or understanding technologies that have been around for decades? The majority of companies hear terms like Cloud, Big Data and Mobile and admit that they are still stuck with legacy infrastructure, with no real clue as to how to move forward.

One of the big blockers for IoT over the past few years is that every company with a vested interest in it, has wanted to control it. This has led to any external customer, be it a consumer wanting a smart home, or an enterprise wanting smart infrastructure, having to use multiple systems. 

Many of the IoT deployments at the moment focus on the dots that get joined within an organisation, connecting their own assets and their own infrastructure. The vision of IoT that has been propagated over the past few years is that systems will share data, so that across the entire chain, transformation will take place.

Larger companies in every industry are currently struggling with a very real issue of transformation at the moment. In many cases, companies are skirting around their core infrastructure and using middleware as a way of doing iterative changes. IoT for the majority of companies is something that they see as a distant possibility on their roadmap, not something that they are able to pay much attention to now.

One of the major challenges with the reality of IoT is this; companies still aren’t able to properly understand the data being generated at the moment. It doesn’t matter how much infrastructure companies put in place or how connected the world may be, if they aren’t able to use that information properly, the ability to collect data is irrelevant

IoT is as much about what is happening in the background to understand and process the information as it is about the way in which that data is collected. If we look at the consumer market, Waze is, in many ways the perfect example of IoT in action. It turns millions of cars into a live data feed of road conditions and traffic information. This is fed through the app to help people optimise their driving, which is also fed into Google’s services, to the extent that Google Now is able to recommend that you leave earlier for a meeting.

It’s the intelligence that makes this useful and powerful, but this is precisely where companies struggle. The choices of whether to utilise cellular M2M, Sigfox, Wi-Fi technologies or Bluetooth; the sensors that you deploy — all of it means nothing without being able to analyse the data in real time.

In the enterprise space, this means that we will continue to see closed networks, where the value of deployment is to that company, and that company alone. Some data feeds may be opened up, but a vast amount of data will be kept private. Companies may not want to open up data about predictive maintenance for their assets or equipment, for understandable competitive reasons.

(more…)

Read more

February 2, 2016

Posted by: George Malim

Jedi-OT knights and the SIMless wonders

Long ago, in a cellular galaxy not too far away this ubiquitous device was specified by ETSI and in 1991 the first batch were produced by G&D. It provides secure, authenticated access for billions of people globally to cellular networks. It is of course the dear old SIM card. This invention has been an enabler for the growth of mobile telephony but has it done the same for M2M? And will it do so for the IoT in the future, asks David Parker, the senior analyst with Beecham Research. (more…)

Read more

January 12, 2016

Posted by: George Malim

Don’t get caught with your IoT exposed – Part One

We live on a hyper-connected planet, writes Rob Greer the chief marketing officer and senior vice president of products at ForeScout Technologies. Just over 40% of the world is online, with an average of five connected devices per US household. And now, with the Internet of Things (IoT) in full swing among individuals and organisations, those numbers are about to explode. There will be 30 billion connected things by 2020, compared to a relatively paltry 13 billion connected devices in 2015. (more…)

Read more

January 11, 2016

Posted by: George Malim

Nokia Networks and Oi set up Latin American LTE IoT Lab

Nokia Networks and Oi Brasil are to set up an LTE IoT lab and create a working group to study solutions and opportunities in IoT, develop joint projects and test innovative solutions. The investments in innovation will be supported by a fund that will finance projects within IoT verticals such as agribusiness, connected cars, homes and smart cities and e-health. (more…)

Read more

November 20, 2015

Posted by: George Malim

New 3GPP NB-IoT standard adds much needed choice to M2M landscape

Last week saw one of the year’s most far-reaching developments in M2M connectivity, as 3GPP’s plenary meeting in Phoenix, Arizona reached a decision on the standardisation of a new NarrowBand IoT (NB-IoT) technology, reports Aapo Markkanen, a principal analyst at Machina Research. (more…)

Read more

October 1, 2015

Posted by: IoT global network

David Parker

IoT and the Multi-Billionaires

The Internet of Things is an interesting business, though the terminology can be confusing even for those of us working in it. (more…)

Read more

September 7, 2015

Posted by: IoT global network