Google calls on carriers to craft IoT plans Google has offered up some uncommon good sense about the Internet of Things, telling a US conference that cheap networking is more important than fast networking for IoT applications. What's emerging in the machine-to-machine world of the IoT is that many “things” really don't have that much to say, and when they're saying it …
On the topic of carriers and GSM et al, currently we have millions of phone SIMs on the carrier networks. If the billions of devices on the IoT had a SIM you'd need to pick a different addressing scheme than phone numbers (IPv6?) and upgrade the capacity of the base stations to cope with several magnitudes more devices. You can already see them creaking now when standing on a busy train station with 100's of devices trying to log on at once.
For the example given, it wouldn't matter because that dumpster is only going online for a split second a couple times a month. If you want a device to be connected to the cell at all times, that's a different matter.
Maybe they need a hybrid pricing scheme for IoT devices, which charge for minutes connected to the cell, along with data transmitted, to encourage them to be efficient in their usage of resources. And ideally not all try to spit out their data at 12:00:01 every night.
No, there is no need for much, if any additional radio or data capacity.
Compare with Amazon Whispernet,upon which I'm writing this.
IoT devices should connect once or twice a day at most and send 100kB at most -probably much less. They are not always-on!
There is the addressing issue, but that should be easiy solved as yes, these devices do not need a phone number, merely a SIM/IMEI
you'd need to pick a different addressing scheme than phone numbers
Not necessarily. E.164 defines a 15-digit numbering scheme for worldwide phone numbers, with a max of 14 digits for national numbers. Even allowing for "illegal" numbers such as ones that begin 000 or 999 there's still likely to be some 46 bits of address available, which is about the same as the MAC address range. Most devices wouldn't need to be individually addressible anyway, so some number sharing would be possible.
Even the least obvious markets are sometimes using mobile phone technology. According to this article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/13/smart_meters/
"Existing smart meters are using the cellular networks, generally 2G"
Positions out in the middle of a field are even more likely to use mobile phone technology, since other technologies require more power and/or less security and/or a local network to connect to.
...A mobile connection (here in old Europe) sits around 4 to 5 Euro-quids per month of operational costs for a mid-sized MNO (Mobile Network Operator). Expect the figure to increase for an MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator).
The figure doesn't include any indirect cost like marketing or procurement. As an example: SIM card costs around 1,5 Eur in mid-sized batches and number attribution has a cost too.
All in all it's not a feasible model for a very low-cost or out-of-band connection, it doesn't scale in terms of business unless the operator can come with some form of contract subsides.
On the other hand, White Spaces WiFi should hold a promising cost/throughput ratio because of the relatively low density of relaying stations per coverage. Not incidentally Google is already on it: https://www.google.com/get/spectrumdatabase/
Of course, if some cheap plan that allowed a few KB of data per day for pennies were available I can see gadget manufacturers creating devices to use it for SMS and/or twitter, thus upsetting the phone companies who rely on selling unnecessarily expensive data plans to smartphone users...
@PhilO'Sophical
It's a rock-bottom cost for the operator. What I want to say is that the mobile model cannot go anything lower than that, not at present with the current legacy onboarding and provisioning systems that any MNO has.
AFAIK, mobile operators are already in a phase of market destruction thanks to the likes of WhatsApp that have been substantially eroding the SMS business.
I am actually a bit surprised that Google is expressing concern, I thought they would have circumvented the operators "tout-court" in the race for ubiquitous IoT.
@Phil O'Sophical - "if some cheap plan that allowed a few KB of data per day for pennies were available"
At least one UK MVNO offers SIMs and plans targeted at the M2M/low data market. The catch is that the plans do seem expensive, until you factor in what Beentheredonethat is saying about the underlying costs of service provision.
The devices may not need to always be in range of something. The mobile ones may just need to chirp an update when they get a chance. This tilts the amount of coverage needed.
These devices may not be trackable by cellular networks if they don't talk unless they need to.
You might be able to do it with low power mesh networks and a courier, who drives thru the area, 'picking up deliveries', then rolling into range of something it can upload to. It can roll back later with the ACKs. Yes it'd need cryptography.
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