There are now more connected machines than there are people
on Earth and, with machine-to-machine (M2M) technologies enabling the internet
of things (IoT), this is about to accelerate. Are we as Kenyans ready for the
age of the machines?
At some point back in 2014, the number of connected devices
in the world surpassed that of the human population, according to GSMA
Intelligence, with 7.2bn devices versus 7.19bn humans. Two years later,
according to the GSMA’s real-time tracker, there are now 7.7bn mobile connections,
including M2M devices. Kenya is entering into a world where the internet will
work for us, continuously and quietly, in the background; doing all the
necessary, everyday behind-the-scenes tasks, from renegotiating m-shwari loans
to booking holidays, making smarter financial decisions to organising garbage
collection and ensuring fresh milk is delivered to our smart fridges.
Cisco estimates the so-called IoT world of connected devices
will grow to 50bn connected machines between 2020 and 2030. These connected
machines won’t be like today’s connected machines, which require the usual human
interface. Instead, they will talk to each other in the form of software agents
using a confection of sensors: wireless technologies; 5G; Bluetooth; Wi-Fi;
radio frequency identification (RFID), telemetry and GPS, to name a few. These
machines will take every shape and inhabit every corner of our lives. We could
have internet-connected 3D printers and equipment on factory floors responding
to fulfil e-commerce orders made on a whim, half a world away, via a virtual
assistant embedded in a personal device. A self-driving car, communicating with
other connected cars on the road, could pick you up from the office and bring
you to your front door, which will be unlocked by your smart watch, while
intelligent light bulbs and smart meters might herald your arrival with
welcoming lamplight and hot water for a bath.
To enlighten my fellow Kenyan STEM savvies, I will lightly
touch on the history of M2M for better understanding of what we are about to
get into in a few years coming.
radar_shutterstock
RADAR and SONAR were the grandfathers of LIDAR, the
laser-based technology used not only in police speed-guns at waiyaki way, southern
bypass and Mombasa road but to enable
the self-driving cars of tomorrow, which will be internet-connected and rely on
GPS to know where they are and Bluetooth to talk to smartphones and smart
watches. Machine-to-machine in today’s world mostly consists of devices with
SIMs that are typically used in industrial applications to talk to other
machines to relay data and control equipment.
RADAR and SONAR were the grandfathers of LIDAR, the
laser-based technology that will enable the self-driving cars of tomorrow.During
the Cold War, the advances in telematics, telemetry and radio, as well as the
first concepts of the internet, evolved. Not many people know this, but the
internet was originally intended as a way for the survivors of an expected
nuclear apocalypse to communicate with each other.
In 1968, the US
state of Minnesota first began using radio transmitters to track the movement
of several hundred wolves. That same year, the father of M2M, Theodore G
Paraskevakos (also the inventor of Caller ID), came up with the concept for
M2M, whereby machines would automatically communicate with each other. Within a
decade, he formed Metretek in Melbourne to create the first smart meters for
electricity grids.While all this was happening, factories started to become
automated, with the first programmable logic controllers appearing in the
1950s, and the world saw the creation of SCADA systems, which were operating
systems for assembly lines and power plants.
The next major leap in the evolution of M2M came in the form
of intelligent barcoding technology, RFID, where passive tags would collect
energy from a nearby RFID reader’s interrogating radio waves to track goods in
warehouses. One of the first uses of RFID was in the early 1970s, when Los
Alamos Laboratories used RFID tags on behalf of the US government to track
cattle.
In 1973, Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn invented the Transmission
Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP), to enable the exchange
of data over networks. Just as the internet was about to change the world
forever – thanks to Tim Berners-Lee inventing HTML to make it easier to use –
the first digital cellular network, GSM, was deployed in Finland in 1991.
As of 2016, with 7.7bn mobile connections on planet Earth,
some 240.1m are M2M devices.
nest-smart-thermostat
Nest’s smart thermostat is just one of the consumer-oriented
internet of things/M2M devices designed to support the thoughtful home. The
thermostat learns user behaviour to provide the right temperatures and interacts
with other M2M devices, including smart light bulbs from Philips. Today’s M2M
devices are designed to do specific things, such as relay temperature and
location information from refrigeration trucks carrying food and medicine,
analyse and report driver behaviour on behalf of insurance companies, and
instruct soft-drink makers to resupply vending machines. But, as these devices
start to connect with the cloud and analytics via IoT gateways, the
possibilities to enhance our Kenyan lives, drive new services and reinvent
entire industries become possible. As such, M2M is at the heart of the
industrial internet of things (IIoT), powering smart factories that can be run
remotely from a tablet computer, and smart buildings that monitor their
environment and feed data back to the cloud.
In the consumer world, M2M is inspiring a whole new
generation of inventors. Tony Fadell dreamed up the Nest device to learn
people’s temperature preferences in their homes, while Irish start-up Drop has
created smart connected weighing scales to help people cook and bake better.
Without M2M, the internet of things that will dominate our
lives in future years would be a question mark, and the digital disruption
transforming traditional industries would not be possible.
‘Personally through my
experience in both the Telco’s and banking industries, I feel the biggest
challenge is that a lot of the M2M devices may be cellular devices but they
don’t have specific identities, so this opens up a whole question around
security and trusted services ’~Samwel Kariuki
The future of M2M
M2M has had different guises over the years, starting out as
telemetry and turning into telematics before its current catchy title. Yet,
soon, M2M could disappear as it gets swallowed up by the overall move by
telecoms operators to be the key
enablers for the internet of things.(A field am currently delving deeper&
would want to champion this great course and revolutionize the way Kenyans will
do businesses, run lives and change lifestyle for the better).
Many mobile operators such as Safaricom will view the IoT
opportunity as a way of competing with cloud providers and over-the-top (OTT)
players like Google and Amazon. This will be a very healthy platform for Kenya
to compete globally and shine in its STEM undertakings.
M2M has been associated with cellular and operators want to
use the technology to drive higher value-added services.While operators have
lost ground to OTT players in terms of social media and other consumer
services, the internet of things is a chance for such operators to define
themselves much earlier on and, for this, they need to build out their
competency within the application layer and integrate with the backend.In time,
M2M – or, simply, internet of things – is an opportunity for our Kenyan telecoms
operators to move ahead of OTTs and build extensive application delivery tools
in internet of things and get first-mover advantage.
Once it was telematics and then it was M2M and now it is
going mainstream. But the problem is there are now loads of devices out there
communicating with systems that are behind a firewall. The biggest challenge is
that a lot of the M2M devices may be cellular devices but they don’t have
specific identities, so this opens up a whole question around security and trusted
services. Backhaul capacity might have to increase by 1,000 times as the number
of devices reaches 50bn. But I think so much of this will be invisible to people,
supporting things that will work without effort.
Bluetooth is on the threshold of being the enabling wireless
technology for the internet of things. There are other technologies like Wi-Fi
and 5G, but it still comes down to power and range and why it makes sense to
build on things that have already been built. At some point, it might not be
possible to extend the life of Bluetooth, and [it will be time] for something
new to come along, but that day is far away.
Another possible enabler of the IoT via M2M is a new network
platform called Sigfox, which addresses power and range issue. Currently
operating in 18 countries and registering more than 7m devices on its network,
Sigfox owes its speed of deployment to the fact that its network requires
lighter infrastructure than traditional wireless networks and only needs a
limited number of sites in order for it to increase its network footprint. I
wish to live& see for the day where our new innovators from campus will
deploy a ‘’Kenyan Sigfox’’ and be able to compete both locally and
internationally.
Whether it will still be known as M2M, or form a part of the
internet of things collective, it is clear that machines talking to other
machines on our behalf is only the start of the next phase of humanity’s
technology odyssey in our beloved country Kenya.
Written and
Compiled by: Samwel Kariuki
