The Internet Of Things (IOT) is coming! Along with 5G, SDN & NFV, the IOT has been driving industry article column inches for a couple of years now. And what do we have to show for this IOT hype? To most people's minds... not a lot.
IOT breaks down into a few areas: wearables, automotive, home, medical, industrial, transport. And reports suggest anywhere from 10 to 50 billion 'things' will be embedded with the ability to connect to a network. That's 5 to 10 times more devices than there are smartphones on the planet.
A year ago I thought those claims were wildly off the mark. No one really needs a bluetooth toothbrush, and all those internet-connected fridges simply haven't happened. So I lay back and imagined that the IOT was another industry fad, consigned to promise much but deliver little. This isn't the IOT ... the Internet Of Things, it is the IORT ... the Internet Of Rubbish Things.
In the history of our telecoms world, there is an enjoyable tendency to get over-excited about something new, then forget about it and focus on the next 'something new'. And then, a few years later, let the world catch up and hey-presto... that promised 'something new' finally happens, to dramatically change the world, but without too much fan-fare
I was at the Mobile World Congress in 2007 the year after iPhone launched, and remember the buzz around 'Mobile TV'. I remember the quirky Japanese phones with screens that rotated on their unwieldy soap bar handsets to show video in landscape mode.
There was an expectation that, with the advent of 3G, video and TV services would launch across the mobile carrier world and be the next big growth driver for data usage. Vodafone duly launched video-calling and showed at least one Cricket test series on their free trial of mobile TV. 3 Months later the trial had ended with no commercial proposition resulting. 2007 happened to be the year that Netflix began it's streaming service and began it's move away from posting DVDs to the public.
Cut forward 9 years, through 4G, fibre-optic, wifi-n, and we arrived at the mobile-video-enabled Rio 2016 Olympic Games. Almost half of all content streams from Rio 2016 were made to mobile devices.
This dramatic change of behaviour is what we expected in 2008. It just took a little while to get there. To go from a failed mobile TV pilot to this point, where mobile video is something that not-just-millenials have wholeheartedly adopted, indicates what the future may hold for IOT.
IOT is best when the customers don't notice it's there. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." So said Arthur C Clarke. And this is where IOT is the magic.
These tiny embedded sensors that track your movement and heart beat, and share them with your smartphone. The SatNav in your car which shows live traffic information. The thermostat that warms your house when it sees that you're coming home. All happening magically without us having to think about it.
So the IOT revolution will happen not with a fan-fare, but with a billion high-frequency whispers. And before you know it, everything will be connected, and the 'everythings' will be making your life that little bit better.
IOT breaks down into a few areas: wearables, automotive, home, medical, industrial, transport. And reports suggest anywhere from 10 to 50 billion 'things' will be embedded with the ability to connect to a network. That's 5 to 10 times more devices than there are smartphones on the planet.
A year ago I thought those claims were wildly off the mark. No one really needs a bluetooth toothbrush, and all those internet-connected fridges simply haven't happened. So I lay back and imagined that the IOT was another industry fad, consigned to promise much but deliver little. This isn't the IOT ... the Internet Of Things, it is the IORT ... the Internet Of Rubbish Things.
In the history of our telecoms world, there is an enjoyable tendency to get over-excited about something new, then forget about it and focus on the next 'something new'. And then, a few years later, let the world catch up and hey-presto... that promised 'something new' finally happens, to dramatically change the world, but without too much fan-fare
I was at the Mobile World Congress in 2007 the year after iPhone launched, and remember the buzz around 'Mobile TV'. I remember the quirky Japanese phones with screens that rotated on their unwieldy soap bar handsets to show video in landscape mode.
There was an expectation that, with the advent of 3G, video and TV services would launch across the mobile carrier world and be the next big growth driver for data usage. Vodafone duly launched video-calling and showed at least one Cricket test series on their free trial of mobile TV. 3 Months later the trial had ended with no commercial proposition resulting. 2007 happened to be the year that Netflix began it's streaming service and began it's move away from posting DVDs to the public.
Cut forward 9 years, through 4G, fibre-optic, wifi-n, and we arrived at the mobile-video-enabled Rio 2016 Olympic Games. Almost half of all content streams from Rio 2016 were made to mobile devices.
This dramatic change of behaviour is what we expected in 2008. It just took a little while to get there. To go from a failed mobile TV pilot to this point, where mobile video is something that not-just-millenials have wholeheartedly adopted, indicates what the future may hold for IOT.
IOT is best when the customers don't notice it's there. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." So said Arthur C Clarke. And this is where IOT is the magic.
These tiny embedded sensors that track your movement and heart beat, and share them with your smartphone. The SatNav in your car which shows live traffic information. The thermostat that warms your house when it sees that you're coming home. All happening magically without us having to think about it.
So the IOT revolution will happen not with a fan-fare, but with a billion high-frequency whispers. And before you know it, everything will be connected, and the 'everythings' will be making your life that little bit better.
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