Social Machinery

Probably one of the most farsighted and most well renowned logos in the mobile industry was “Connecting people” from Nokia, the finish handset manufacturer. The slogan, created by Ove Strandberg, established the vision of the mobile industry during the last decade: connect 6 Billion people via wireless technology. Clearly, the wireless industry has done an incredible job on fulfilling this shared vision. Currently, more than 4 Billion users around the world communicate via a mobile device and in the next 3 years another 1 Billion people will join them. Besides, wireless broadband is growing exponentially and via 2014 most of internet connections will be performed via wireless network.

But the question today is what is going to be the next decade motto for this industry?

The internet of things

During 1999 MIT researchers coined the concept of Internet of things, a vision where internet available everywhere could connect any device surrounding us. Still, in our daily life we interact with many objects that are independent and isolated with each others, but what would happen in these objects start “talking” and sharing real-tine information?

The internet of things started connecting machines at a striking pace leveraging on RFID technologies. Radiofrequency and silicon chip “soul” enabled machines to start identifying and communicating with others.  Industries like logistics and retail realized the value of this technology and incorporated into their operations.

Currently, the next step on the internet of things is to give Machines a “soul”: ubiquity, real time data transfer, online communication with any other devices. Most of analysts highlight that the three main challenges of this industry in order to move forward are standardization, chip production costs and network access.

Machine to Machine: The next mobile wireless paradigm

Machine-to-machine (M2M) communications is a silent wildcard in the growth of the cellular network usage. This is good news for mobile operators, moreover when we see a dramatic growth of M2M in a wide range of industries like automobile, utilities, healthcare or home appliances. According to

The growth rate of M2M is dramatic. According to Berg Insight AB , M2M connections account for 1.4% of all mobile connections or roughly 60 Million connections. But, in more advanced markets like US or Europe numbers are even higher with 4.3% and 2.4% respectively. Berg Insight predicts that in 2014, 3.1% Mobile connections will be M2M (250 Million), which implies an annual growth rate of 26%.

M2M is just an expression on how internet is evolving. As technology enables internet available anytime, anywhere via widespread mobile access technologies; anything that needs an internet connection could have one. This is also more needed in a world where people in average interact with at least 50 machines every day. (Imaging connecting this machines together!)

Another interesting angle about M2M is that machines don’t need a big data pipe to communicate between each others or users. Most of the use cases requires low traffic data and could perfectly work on a 2G network. For instance a truck reporting that the temperature in its freezer compartment is rising to a its limit or a consumer’s home lighting system warning that some of the lights are still on, are not hungry-bandwidth type of applications, instead its required short data transfer during a period of time.

 Privacy concerns about internet of things

Clearly, privacy definition is evolving in our connected society. We have been witness on how people freely share personal information on social networking sites. But what happens when machines surrounding you can share personal information to others?

As ITU mentioned: “To promote a more widespread adoption of the technologies underlying the Internet of Things, principles of informed consent, data confidentiality and security must be safeguarded. Moreover, protecting privacy must not be limited to technical solutions, but encompass regulatory, market-based and socio-ethical considerations.”

Spain M2M case study

In Spain there are more than 1.8 Million M2M connections according to the latest CMT report. This is the fastest mobile segment in the country with more than 3.3% market share of all mobile connections. Main verticals using M2M technologies are vending machines, smart metering, access control and health care.

Very interesting cases can be found within Spain. For instance, electric plugs that can be power off via SMS. The device uses a SIM card to receive information from any mobile device. But other examples are even more compelling: Cars that can connect directly with your dealer for online breakdown monitoring or house heating system managed remotely via your mobile device.

Recently, Telefonica has decided to create an international M2M business unit to offer tailor made solutions to several industries. The business unit already has 100 experts in different countries. The company expects to multiply by 10 the number of M2M lines in the next 5 to 10 years.