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Opinion: The IoE is here – at Least a Glimmer of it — I think

March 21, 2016

By Ernest Worthman

Worthman

Worthman

March 22. 2016 — SIGFOX, an IoT supplier, continues on its quest to cover the nation’s top 10 biggest cities with its Internet of Things-focused wireless network by the end of the first quarter of this year. The company said it is currently building out its network in locations such as New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, Denver, and Dallas, following the launch of its network in San Francisco in October.

There is a lot of, what I consider to be marketing hype here to try and get old technology new traction. First of all, the Internet of Everything isn’t even defined yet. It has been called the Internet of Things, of Everything, of Your Things, of Medical Things, of Embedded Things and many others.

So exactly how anyone or any company can say they are doing something that is the Internet of Whatever (IoW), today, is questionable.

The president of the company said they “have a number of trials about to kick off in the next 60 days,” and the company is in the midst of opening offices in cities across the United States.
Here is what I find interesting about this. The network is low-speed. They seem to target apps like predictive maintenance, asset management, crop management, pallet tracking, water monitoring, home security, smoke alarms and similar. It works in the ISM band 800/900 MHz depending upon locations.

For the home security angle, it says that its sensors can detect “domestic incidents” such as smoke or carbon monoxide emissions, dramatic temperature changes, power failure and intrusion into the house, and immediately inform users by text messaging. The technology comes in the form of briefcase-sized base stations covering 20 to 30 Km backhauled with DSL, satellite or 3G networks. Hmmm…don’t we already have all of that, pre-IoW?

Well, how I look at this that it is simply more M2M with a marketing spin trying to sell it as IoW, and not really what the IoW is looking to be. Lots of M2M companies are trying to reposition their technology to sell it as the IoW. And, it may well be part of the IoW. But, to claim it is the IoW from the git-go to me, is a more just marketing spin than IoW technology.
The IoW is a net generation platform that, in order to exist will integrate so many different technologies, both existing and new. But the base of it will be so much more broad than M2M. I guess creative marketing will be as much of the IoW as technology. We will have to see just how successful this angle might be.

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