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The Internet of Things Can't Afford the Internet

According to some of its key players, at least.
Image: Pixabay

The Internet of Things seems foretold at this point. Soon, we middle-class Americans will finally be free of the tyranny of having to actually look at the kitchen trash to determine if it's full or adjust the thermostat in person. The army of future data scientists currently pursuing MOOC certificates while half-watching True Detective demands nothing less than the highest-resolution vending machine data.

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I kid, of course. But the Internet of Things as it's usually presented to consumers has a way of seeming a bit cartoonish and trivial, which only slightly accurate. This triviality—of, say, logging and transmitting trashcan fullness data—is one aspect of a serious and quite real problem clouding the IoT future and even its present. This is the lack of cheap and available wide-area networks available to actually connect these things.

This was raised at a panel earlier this week at the annual Embedded Systems Conference by Syed Hosain, chief technologist at Aeris Communications Inc. Aeris' business model is precisely this: providing "machine-to-machine" (M2M) and IoT networks. It does this largely through its AeroConnect web of 2G and 3G cellular towers, but this service isn't exactly free. Which is a problem when we start talking about connecting devices for "lighter" purposes. As is often imagined, the future IoT includes a lot of these devices.

Image: SigFox enabled breakout board

EE Times has a good summary/analysis of the panel, the proceedings of which have not yet been made available to non-attendees of the ESC conference. Hosain's takeaway point is that, "today's long range machine-to-machine networks generally use wired or cellular links that are widely available but too expensive to be profitable."

But, "I postulate that for the next ten years cellular is the only viable option for that kind of coverage," Hosain said.

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Some quick background: Wide-area machine-to-machine networks are currently being realized via bandwidth found in the pseudo-Wild West of license-exempt, sub-1 GHz radio frequencies, what's historically been known as the Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) bands. The Things of the Internet of Things don't really require higher bit rates, which is one thing that they have going for them.

It's not that there isn't a significant and well-funded effort underway at deploying these low-power IoT networks. Three groups in particular are currently developing nets at 900 or so MHz: the LoRa Alliance (backed by players like Intel and Cisco), SigFox (which will have 1,200 base stations online in the US next year), and NWave, whose technology forms the basis of the Weightless-N wireless specification.

Paul Fox, an NWave representative, offered a similar assessment at the ESC panel: data plans aren't at all cost-effective for apps designed to, "say a trash can is full or not, or let you know that the ground is moist or dry." Cellular networks make more sense for less consumer-directed applications like industrial machinery monitoring, vehicle tracking, and health-care networking. For example, Aeris, Hosain's machine-to-machine network provider, started out with alarm systems and trucking companies, while one of the largest IoT implementations to date comes courtesy of New York Waterways—via Chicago's Fluidmesh Networks—and is tasked with tracking vessels around New York City.

Trash cans these are not.

Even when built-out, the trio of networks above will only consist of around 14 percent of all IoT connections, even if Sigfox delivers on its promise of complete US coverage by 2016. The rest will be shouldered by short-range networks like WiFi and Bluetooth, and-or emerging standards like Cat-M, which is based on optimized LTE. Another possibility is ISM band WiFi, which will have the advantages of being royalty free and not requiring a network operator. This is still years away, however. Meanwhile, many M2M devices are still connected with regular old wires, which still doesn't seem all that unreasonable for an ATM machine.

In any case, internet your belongings as you please, but it won't come all that cheap.