Author: John Marcus

MWC24: IoT Providers are Navigating Market Consolidation and Uneven Growth

by John Marcus, posted in Internet of Things
J. Marcus

Summary Bullets:

• IoT providers that have led the market for years continued to press forward in a more mature but still unpredictable market, navigating technology and commercial disruptions while considering new growth opportunities

• Pricing, competition, consolidation, eSIM, and trends in the key connected car space (including growth in 5G connections) were among the issues discussed in analyst briefings

Leading traditional IoT connectivity providers from the ranks of mobile network operators broke little or no news at MWC 2024 held in Barcelona, although each maintained an impressive presence in terms of exhibits, speakers, and IoT business leaders. Disruptive IoT MVNO and platform provider 1NCE did manage to draw significant attention from its booth near the food trucks, launching a unique offer for emerging high data requirements use cases priced simply at EUR5 per gigabyte. 1NCE has been offering prepaid low bandwidth services (ten years for $10) for use cases such as smart metering, street lighting, and asset tracking for several years. Now it has innovated again, offerings speeds of up to 25 Mbps for video surveillance and industrial monitoring requirements using its flat rate pricing for data usage.

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eSIMs Should Fuel Growth in Cellular IoT for the Enterprise

by John Marcus, posted in Internet of Things
J. Marcus

Summary Bullets:

• eSIMs first emerged in 2016, with strong potential for adoption in both consumer applications and industrial IoT.

• A new standard was published earlier in 2023, which will make using eSIMs for IoT easier for device makers and enterprise users, likely prompting growth in cellular IoT market opportunities.

SIM cards have long been a tool for mobile operator control of user devices. Dedicated to and often issued by an operator, once inserted in a device, there is a good chance the device would remain subscribed to the operator’s service as long as it was being used. ‘Control’ may be too strong of a word, but plastic SIMs certainly helped maintain a high level of customer ‘stickiness.’ Swapping out SIM cards – which provide user identification and authentication for network access – is a slow and clunky process whether there is one device or 10,000 devices involved.

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Will Network Slicing be the Savior for 5G in the Enterprise?

by John Marcus, posted in Internet of Things, Mobilize
J. Marcus

Summary Bullets:

• The enterprise is where 5G was meant to shine, but the long and evolutionary rollout approach by network operators has limited the impact.

• Some of the use cases originally targeted by 5G have been deployed using 4G or non-standalone (NSA) 5G from public or private networks, but the advanced features of standalone (SA) 5G such as network slicing could finally help realize the industry’s claims now that availability is starting to appear.

So much verbiage has been expended by the telecom industry (including analysts like me) regarding the potential for 5G to enterprise organizations and to the network service providers themselves. After five years or so, the hype has died down considerably as the impact has yet to materialize at the expected scale. For the consumer market, serious questions remain around the potential for 5G – even for SA 5G – when (once it’s widely available) the full palette of features enabled by the 5G core network and requisite radio spectrum will be realized. Beyond mobile gaming, the conversation tends to stop after connected car-related advances.

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Private 5G Market Continues to Attract New Entrants, Particularly Telcos 

by John Marcus, posted in Internet of Things, Mobilize, Network
J. Marcus

Summary Bullets:

• The mercurial market sentiment around private 5G may be rebounding again in a more positive direction, as a number of new service launches and partnerships are announced in July and August 2023.

• Telcos are taking the lead in new service offerings (generally based on solutions from familiar infrastructure partners), while integrators, platform vendors, and market specialists forge new market alliances.

For suppliers of network gear and services as well as the applications they support, the private wireless/cellular/mobile networks market has been seen variously since 2020 as a bright spot, a conundrum, or a concern. Some of the same market players have been extremely bullish and cautious within a short space of time. Whenever there appears to be a chorus of disappointment, it isn’t long before key players or new entrants (or analysts) are quoted saying the market appears to finally be picking up.

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Digital Trust is Key to Today’s Data-Centric Business Models

by John Marcus, posted in Big Data, Cloud Enable, IT Leader, Secure
J. Marcus

Summary Bullets:

• Without a transparent commitment to data integrity, tech companies – and, increasingly, all businesses – will struggle to retain customer trust.

• ‘Digital trust’ goes beyond customer personal data protection, however, extending to trust in fundamental data integrity in all digital interactions.

As just about every tech company embraces artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and data analytics to take advantage of the long-term trend of digital transformation, digital trust has emerged as a key issue for consumers and enterprises – and for the tech companies themselves. The idea is that today’s increasingly data-centric world is only possible with transparency and trust, and that trust and security in digital business models is a fundamental requirement, and not optional.

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Generative AI Watch: Will Generative AI Drive Additional Demand for MEC Services (and 5G)?

by John Marcus, posted in Big Data, Internet of Things, Mobilize
J. Marcus

Summary Bullets:

• There are many potential use cases in the enterprise for generative AI, but many will be enabled by existing cloud solutions.

• Some use cases requiring real-time responses may emerge, generating modest demand for MEC and/or 5G services.

Expectations of demand for 5G and multi-access edge computing (MEC) services from the enterprise segment are established – in part – on enabling artificial intelligence (AI) to be used in real-time applications. AI requires considerable computing power, usually achieved in the cloud where its demanding requirements can be scaled, but where such resources are too distant (due to network latency) to be relied upon for use cases where seconds or milliseconds in application response time can determine success or failure. There are other reasons why MEC makes sense in this scenario, including both the security benefits and cost savings achieved by not sending massive amounts of data to and from the cloud. With the recent hype around generative AI and the potential impact on various professions, industries, and organizations, it is worth considering whether its uptake will mean even more demand for MEC and/or 5G.

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‘AIoT’ Mashup Works Better as a Concept Than a Buzzword

by John Marcus, posted in Big Data, Internet of Things
J. Marcus

Summary Bullets:

• Tech buzzwords work when they successfully communicate innovation in a catchy phrase.

• The emerging ‘AIoT’ construction is awkward, but it may help IoT providers communicate their value to knowledgeable tech audiences.

The concept of combining AI and IoT has been around for a few years. More recently, some tech market players have begun using the phraseology ‘AIoT’ to capture it. A good technology buzzword helps communicate instantly to tech and non-tech audiences what the innovation is all about, or at least provides a sizable hint. Both ‘artificial intelligence’ and ‘Internet of Things’ have been pretty good at this, but the mashup term AIoT (or ‘artificial intelligence of things’) is awkward, not self-explanatory, and ultimately, unhelpful.

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Low-Power WANs Still High on the Agenda for IoT Providers

by John Marcus, posted in Internet of Things

J. Marcus

Summary Bullets:

• NB-IoT and LTE-M took several years to build market momentum due to the significant work required upfront by service providers and device makers.

• Despite that, low-power wide-area networks (LPWANs) remains a fundamental aspect of leading IoT service provider strategies.

LPWANs for IoT did not achieve the kind of growth that analysts, network operators, device makers, and even potential users (like utilities and local governments) predicted 10 years ago. Even five years ago, the IoT industry confidently expected the advent of narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) and LTE-M standards to kickstart deployments on a vast scale.

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GSA Report Confirms Key Trends in Private LTE/5G While Highlighting the Difficulty in Tracking Deployments

by John Marcus, posted in Internet of Things, Mobilize
J. Marcus

Summary Bullets:

• The Global Mobile Suppliers’ Association (GSA) report demonstrates continued growth in private LTE/5G network deployments within key sectors and regions.

• The report is mostly consistent with GlobalData’s own market tracking data, but not always; variances in definitions and available data sources can account for discrepancies between the different databases.

The GSA has published its latest quarterly report on private cellular networks, adding data from another 66 new networks in Q3 2022 (and 214 during Q1 2022 to Q3 2022) for a total of 955. Its aggregate tracking statistics provide perhaps the most comprehensive view of trends in private LTE and 5G technology deployment over the last few years, given the participation of GSA members such as Ericsson, Huawei, Mavenir, and Nokia in the data collection. Among its key messages for Q3 2022 is that the three fastest-growing industry sectors had been mining, defense, and manufacturing. It also reports that manufacturing, education, and mining remain the three largest sectors in terms of number of deployments, although the actual size and scale of deployments varies by user type.

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NTT and VMware’s Partnership Demonstrates Need for Partnership in Edge Services Delivery

by John Marcus, posted in Cloud Enable, Internet of Things, Mobilize, Secure
J. Marcus

Summary Bullets:

• NTT and VMware integrated their respective private network and edge compute offerings – both were originally launched in 2021 – to offer the new Edge-as-a-Service.

• The partners will go to market jointly and coordinate sales, marketing, and customer co-innovations, with NTT delivering the managed service across its global footprint.

NTT Ltd. and VMware launched Edge-as-a-Service, a fully managed edge compute platform that runs on the Intel network and edge infrastructure and is complemented by NTT’s existing private LTE/5G offering based on technology from Celona. NTT is using VMware’s Edge Compute Stack, an integrated virtual machine (VM) and container-based stack to help organizations modernize and secure edge-native apps close to end users, while VMware – despite already offering a private cellular connectivity platform built on components from Druid Software and ASOCS – is now adopting NTT’s Private 5G as part of its edge solution.

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