Looking Beyond The IoT Platform

There is a misconception that the IoT is one monolithic THING, when in fact, it is more like a phenomenon – there is no simple explanation for all the technologies involved in this movement. What we all understand are the real-life applications like Smart City, Connected Cars, Lightning, Fleet Management and all the use cases of Industrial IoT.

“Initially, leaders viewed the IoT as a silver bullet, a technology that can solve the myriad IT and business problems that their organizations faced. Very quickly, though, they recognized that without the proper framing of the problems, the IoT was essentially a solution looking for a problem.”
Mark Hung, Gartner Research Vice President
Leading the IoT
Gartner Insights on How to Lead in a Connected World

Now the framing is more clear. We have several use cases where the IoT fits in. As in the telecommunication industry, there are a lot of technologies and solutions going on behind the scene that composes that framework, such as IoT Platforms, Security, IoT Devices, Edge Gateways, etc. and of course, the connectivity network.

But within this world, what is the role of the CSP in the Digital IoT transformation? And, will there be a profit in it for operators?

One of many beliefs is that operators will lead the IoT platform solutions but, in fact, the ones leading the change are the main consumer electronics or industrial assets players. They are, after all, the ones that will benefit the most from the device connectivity. Philips with Healthsuite ecosystem and Philips Lightning, and Bosh with Bosh Iot Platform are clear examples of this.

What is the most likely outlook for the customer market? A customer buys an appliance from their favorite retailer, brings the material home, the device self-connects to the Internet (through a mobile network) and the client registers it in the vendor’s mobile app and voilá, everything is working.

In that scenario, what I foresee in the upcoming years is a booming of IoT platforms in the cloud. The big vendors for appliances will have their own (with management portals and SDKs). Of course, some CSPs will have their own, which will benefit small businesses greatly. There will also be other players that will act as integrators with an only platform so that medium-sized companies can build upon that.

These platforms will interact with each other in any case where the information from one device has synergies with others. And just like that, we have the communication era for the machines.

Does this mean that it is like OTT all over again? Are the owners of the network already left behind?

I don’t think so. For starter, OTT is essentially data over an already established consumer data connection. In the IoT scenario, the device self-connects to the network through a previously established internet connection. They cannot do this without the mobile operator. Therefore, mobile operators will be involved from the first minute.

Now, if the devices are self-connected, how will mobile operators charge for the service? The thing is that there will be a significant change in who the customer is, but it will also be based on what the service bills. The customers (from the mobile operator’s point of view) will be the IoT platform owners themselves. Nowadays the end-customer is paying for bandwidth. This new customer will be charged according to the amount of IoT devices connected. The IoT platform owners will pass on this cost to the end-user by including it in the subscription fee (as Amazon, Netflix, etc. does today) or by adding it to the price of the good.

Without a doubt there still are a lot of questions unanswered, technologically speaking. Will 5G be part of the solution? What is the role of eSIMs on this? And much more. Nevertheless, It seems that if mobile operators do not push for a future where they are in it, technology will find another the way (as it always does) in which they are indeed left out.