Summary Bullets:

• Vodafone Business is a leader in global IoT services with a dedicated IoT BU, 120 million connected devices, and clear goals for expansion of its role in managed connectivity, mobile private networks, and end to end solutions.

• In the Americas, the operator is attracting a diverse set of multinational companies, often headquartered in the U.S., that not only require both local and global connectivity, but are looking to deploy IoT for use cases ranging from COVID-19/post-pandemic solutions to connected car, manufacturing, logistics, and healthcare.

While Vodafone Business is a known leader in IoT services in Europe and APAC, its regional group serving the Americas has a somewhat different remit. It looks to serve U.S. companies with global connectivity and IoT solutions requirements, or global companies with U.S. facilities that require IoT services and solutions. These are generally large companies with diverse connectivity needs that increasingly include IoT. Vodafone Americas IoT customers are using the technology for three main “buckets” of use cases in 2021: COVID-19-specific requirements such as thermal cameras, social distancing, and vaccine tracking; post pandemic healthcare applications such as home health monitoring; and deployments of other more traditional IoT use cases that may have stalled in 2020, such as connected car, manufacturing, and logistics.

Continue reading “Vodafone Americas IoT Update: 2021 Starting Strong” →

Summary Bullets:

• The current generation of location services based on GPS and GNSS can only guarantee precision from three to nine meters; according to Verizon, this is not accurate enough to serve applications that depend on very precise real-time location information such as autonomous vehicles, drones, and AI-enhanced construction.
• Verizon’s SaaS-based hyper-precise location (HPL) offering, now integrated into its ThingSpace IoT platform, may be a game-changer, unless other operators have capabilities in the works that can match self-correcting accuracy that provides precision to the centimeter level.

Verizon has been working on integration of hyper-precise location technology into its ThingSpace IoT platform for several years. Now that its 5G and edge technologies are also starting to be more widely available, the operator has launched a service that takes advantage of a capability called real-time kinematics (RTK), which has been available for a decade but has had limited coverage and couldn’t scale to large fleets or IoT deployments.  Verizon is using its cloud backend to make the technology available as a service in 100 markets, with the aim of ‘hypercharging’ new solutions for 4G/5G.  It is currently designed for use cases that rely on very precise location.  The service uses reference stations with known locations and then collects signals and observes the error between what the signal suggests as the location and where the reference station actually is located.  It uses this to reverse-calculate the error and provide error correction to all nearby devices very rapidly (i.e. data is collected/corrected every second).  Verizon has deployed multiple reference stations in each of its 100 markets in order to provide ‘correction as a service.’  The autonomous driving segment (including location information for C-V2X protocols) is the most obvious market to require this kind of precision (not only for truly autonomous vehicles, but also for interim capabilities such as lane keeping, as RTK knows where in the lane the vehicle is located).  However, it seems clear that other IoT use cases such as robotics ‘last-mile’ functionality, AI-enhanced construction, and pedestrian safety will be emerging applications. Continue reading “Verizon Hyper-Precise Location: Is This a Game-Changer for IoT?” →

Summary Bullets:            

• The enterprise IoT platform market continues to evolve. GlobalData reports that new initiatives over the last six months have focused on edge services, hybrid cloud integration, LoRaWAN support, vertical solutions, and new integrations and partnerships.
• GlobalData also notes that AWS, IBM, Microsoft, PTC, and Google continue to lead this market. However, other providers, including Software AG, Oracle, Huawei, Hitachi, and Siemens, also have strong solutions.

Enterprise IoT platforms transform data collected from devices and machines to help customers build applications to automate processes, improve products, and help business leaders make decisions.  GlobalData has published its bi-annual analysis of the enterprise IoT platform market.    The report focuses on new initiatives from AWS, IBM, SAP, Microsoft, PTC, and Google, companies which GlobalData considers to be leaders in this space. Continue reading “Enterprise IoT Platforms Mature Along with New IoT Requirements and Accelerators” →

Summary Bullets:

• The fragmentation of the IoT supplier ecosystem has long been a barrier to adoption, as enterprises may be worried about having to separately negotiate, pay for, and manage connectivity, devices, security solutions, management platforms, and vertical solutions from multiple suppliers.
• The role IT services providers play in making IoT easier to adopt and use is by offering a one-stop shop that combines their own and third-party solutions and adds advisory, integration, professional and managed services, and end-to-end vertical solutions.

In COVID-19 times, IoT has evolved to become a key enabler of solutions to ensure safety of workers, facilitate remote operations through monitoring and control, and ensure uninterrupted supply chains. Some operators and IT services providers (ITSPs) have thrived in this environment, while others have found it difficult to convince skeptical businesses to invest in what may still be perceived as an unproven technology (that has actually been around for 20+ years) with uncertain outcomes. In past years, it has also been difficult for some IoT ecosystem vendors to generate substantial revenues, with security breaches, supplier fragmentation, and perceived high solution costs listed by enterprises as barriers to adoption, along with difficult-to-prove ROIs. Continue reading “Can IT Service Providers Add Significant Value to IoT Deployments?” →

Summary Bullets:

• Comcast, Cox Communications, and UScellular all launched IoT businesses in the 2016-2018 time period.
• While the big mobile operators get most of the deals, these ‘alternative’ providers continued to improve their portfolios and gained new IoT customers in 2020.

2020 was a mixed bag for IoT services as COVID-19 tamped down some opportunities while spawning others, especially in the areas of healthcare, building management, and remote operations. While new services were launched by AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, there are other service providers in the mix. MVNOs such as Sierra Wireless and KORE offer increasingly industry-specific IoT connectivity and platforms, using aggregated cellular connectivity from top mobile operators. In addition, several cable companies and consumer-oriented cellular providers also launched IoT services or full-fledged business units in 2016-2018 to further monetize their networks and offer added value to their business customer bases. In 2020, they added platform capabilities, launched services for new verticals with wide-ranging solution partners, and gained a sprinkling of new customers. Continue reading “Cable Companies and Smaller Mobile Operators Progress on the IoT Services Front” →