Cognitive Era Dawns!

Forty percent of all data will be IoT by 2020, with at least 30 billion devices on the network globally.

By 2020, the number of Internet-connected-devices are expected to be somewhere between 25-50 billion, globally. About 2 billion of these devices are expected to be in India, provided progress of visionary programs such as Digital India and 100 Smart Cities stay on course. Launched in 2014, these two programs could lead to massive expansion of the IoT industry ecosystem. India is betting big on it. IoT (Internet of Things), it is said, will enable India to leapfrog to the 5G era along with rest of the world, unlike almost a decade’s time lag in getting to mobile technologies 2G and then 3G / 4G.

Some of the key aspects of smart cities primarily including intelligent transport systems, smart water, energy and waste management, smart maintenance of cities and citizen services will drive the sensor-everywhere industry environment, enabling humongous data generation available for structuring and making it productive for human life.

There are a number of industry verticals where IoT usecases are running in pilot scale demonstrating how automation is solving industry specific problems, and a number of early adopters are even deriving productivity gains from these pilots. India’s M2M roadmap was released in 2015, outlining the communication infrastructure framework. And the country’s first IoT policy is in the works and open for public consultation. Telecom Secretary J S Deepak, shared some details on it at the recent three-day IoT Congress organized by IET’s India IoT Panel in Bengaluru.

The IoT policy, it is proposed will be implemented via a multi-pillar approach. The approach comprises five vertical pillars including Demonstration Centres; Capacity Building & Incubation; R&D and Innovation; Incentives and Engagements; Human Resource Development) and two horizontal supports -Standards & Governance Structure.

Deepak elaborated in his keynote speech at IoT Congress that significant amount of work is already through. The Registration guidelines and KYC norms for SIM embedded M2M (machine-to-machine) devices are close to announce- ment. “The team has come up with a 13 digit numbering scheme for SIM embedded devices for M2M. These will be different from P2P (person-to-person) communication,” he said. Defining these guidelines and standards are critical for the smart city program and Digital India to take-off. The Telecom Engineering Centre (TEC) and autonomous body Telecommunications Standards Development Society, India (TSDSI), are working to enable the IoT ecosystem with a view of encryption, privacy and security as well.

Recently, India also opened up the licensing for virtual network operators (VNOs), which will boost the IoT ecosystem and in turn fuel growth in telecom sector. IoT offers avenues for telecom operators and system integrators to significantly boost their revenues and in fact, has resulted in their taking lead in adoption of IoT applications and services being offered by the technology.

(Narrowband) NB-IoT to Lead

Earlier this year, telecom major Vodafone Group and Huawei came together to establish an IoT Open Lab in Newbury, UK to develop products and applications on Narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT) technology. First of the devices with applications on NB-IoT will reach market as early as January 2017. Huawei has been similarly working with Deutsche Telekom, China Unicom and Etisalat (UAE) since early 2015. At the recently concluded Huawei Connect 2016 Conference, in Shanghai, Huawei showcased its IoT strategy and industry applications, and how it is involved in setting up open IoT labs and promoting the development of IoT Standards with its global partners.

According to Jiang Wangcheng, VP of Huawei Marketing and Solution Sales Department, Huawei is committed to help telcos accelerate the commercial adoption of NB-IoT and maturing of the industry chain. The company has announced the release of the world’s first 3GPP-based NB-IoT commercial chip called Boudica. It will be a system on chip (SoC) that features high level of integration and ultra low