Sandeep Bazaz , Industry Analyst, DataCenter and Cloud Computing, Frost & Sullivan reported that there will be billions of Internet-connected devices – 10 per household by 2020 and growing. He predicted that logistics, transport & retail would be the biggest initial users of IoT.
Q: IoT challenges apart from security?
Amit Sinha Roy, Vice President, Marketing & Strategy, Tata Communications, said connectivity; power/battery; standards, ie prioritisation of data – does the smart TV or pacemaker get priority; legal – but what about insurance of driverless car?
Haytham Sawalhy, Head of IoT for APAC, Orange Cloud for Business, Asia Pacific, questioned what would be the business models, and who would finance the devices.
Q: Role of telco and monetising the IoT?
Ashwin Jaiswal, Head – IT Business Consulting & Practice (Telecom, Media & Entertainment), said telcos will help the IoT grow, helped by government initiatives. He said that the way people use technology will change. It’s amazing, beautiful, promising, he said. There will be a variety of business models and usages. As for challenges, telcos will become more aggressive – they have cloud and lots of subscribers – and their role will grow.
Sawalhy said we see opportunities with IoT and big data. We push valuable data to enterprise customers so, for example, we identify tourists in France to understand where they go and what they do. We believe in co-innovation, he said.
Roy said the pay-per-use will be the typical business model – for example, in healthcare remote monitoring – on asubscription basis.
Jaiswal said people are moving to pre-pay billing across the world.
Q: What about risk?
Panitharn Payackapan, Department Director – Service Development & Process, UIH – United Information Highway Co., Ltd., said the IoT is like a new restaurant. You try it, and if you don’t get sick, you go back again. So if consumer experience of IoT is good they will return. And when my smart watch exports data to the cloud, and the insurance company finds out that I’m fit, it wil then reduce its premiums.
Q: Will IoT become part of AI systems?
Sawalhy said the IoT is not just about live data but also disconnected data, so AI plays a role there.
Q: Is the network ready to handle IoT?
Payackapan said: Yes, we’re ready. FTTx is everywhere.
Courtesy: NetEvents
