A dose of reality and hands-on perspective on readiness and alternatives for industrial applications| Observations from the Hardware Pioneers Boston event: Developing IoT Tech in the 5G Era: Talks by Verizon, Molex and SIGFOX by Jacqueline Ganim-DeFalco

Listening to the Hardware Pioneers panel on Thursday at the Yard in Boston (co-working space) seemed a little bit like dropping water into a sizzling pan filled with hot oil.  The hot, fast-moving software and communications infrastructures are a cauldron of opportunity for the right industry sectors to implement IoT and for those, it will be a competitive advantage (e.g. automobile, medical devices, military) but for the industrial “middle” there’s some more work to be done and a bit of a sting if trying to jump in too fast.   #5G and all that it promises may have to wait for traditional industrial communications architectures and protocols to catch up.

Shout outs are due to all of the speakers. The first was Dean Donnelly, Molex who laid out the broader context for the industrial revolutions driving “cyber-physical systems” and the value-added or “currencies” of 5G – namely latency, reliability, and service deployment.   His “reality check” was to call out the fact that most of the industrial floor was not yet ready to be called out remotely and that despite the popular discussion about IoT – there is still significant human intervention.  The network strength is only part of the equation as the real issue is that the system architectures are not distributed.  On the other hand, advanced vendors like AWS is creating entirely new protocols that are device-agnostic.  Similar to companies that are “cloud native” the cyber-physical realm will move faster with companies that do not bear the burden of legacy architectures.

Alberto Ignacio Mannil, Innovation Manager from SigFox swung the discussion over to the other side of the pendulum – introducing 0G (low bandwidth network) and its unique place in the IoT spectrum.  Alberto first spoke to the high cost of battery power in 5G applications and the overall economic considerations of when and where to deploy the high bandwidth networks.  For example, a #

0G network requires 10x less the antennas than a high speed network.   The focus of 0G is to send small, relevant bits of information over long distances.  In particular, the focus is on inanimate objects where a signal is deployed to provide an important piece of data.  The number of applications is impressive – from the whereabouts and usage of lobster traps, cows feeding habits, water flow to tracking shipments around the world.  In the shipping example,

Verizon Labs, Anna Hayete then added a colorful set of examples of how they are working with entrepreneurs to find breakthrough applications for 5G.   The “new” lab environment at Verizon is admirable, highly distributed, and refreshing.  No longer the hidden, stealth culture that emanated from Bell Labs, these labs are truly in the field, opening up funding via unique challenges that solve specific problems and access to “try” the technology in all the major innovation hubs – Chelsea (NYC), Cambridge (Boston), Los Angeles,  Palo Alto, and Washington, DC – each with a unique focus tied to the area.  NYC = gaming and financial services; Cambridge = Robotics, Health Care, and Manufacturing; DC = Small factories and First Responders; LA = NFL and Hockey – Data driven applications; Palo Alto = Real Time enterprises.  To date they have awarded over $1M to over 200 startups.

On balance, the message was that 5G networks will not benefit everyone equally.   The market is in a test mode where there will be more options at different investment points, so not everyone will need to rush into the newest network infrastructure.  For some, it will be the only option, but for others, there will be significant parallel investments that need to be made and a sorting of applications in their sector.

Additional background on the speakers is available here on the Hardware Pioneers site.