There is often an inauspicious beginning to a great revolution; peasants on the streets asking for bread; chests of tea being pushed into a harbour; a university Coke machine modified to report its inventory status via the Internet…
I refer of course to the ‘revolutionary’ effect that many are ascribing to the Internet of Things (IoT). This catch-all term is what the world has come to call the logical vanishing point for IP expansion. It takes us far beyond routers and switches, computers and mobile devices. Started by a vending machine engineered by ARPANET experts; it’s evolving with hyperconnected applications for every facet of life and across every vertical industry.
The Internet of Things is truly gargantuan (as well as being full of quirky aspects), but if it is a revolution, what exactly is it revolutionising?
The answer is the network. 4G and LTE access services are already placing many networks under considerable strain, and exhausting available capacity. More subscribers are using more devices, and 5G is on its way by the beginning of the next decade. Add IoT traffic into the mix and the problem exacerbates. The ability to support far greater capacity, perhaps under the auspices of broader architectural changes, will need to evolve in step with these requirements.
As far as revolutions to the network – and the communications market – are concerned, we’ve seen similar seismic transformations before with the unprecedented ramifications of OTT (over-the-top), whipped up by the perfect storm of service innovation, dramatically increased uptake of smart devices, and the widespread availability of bandwidth.
Compounding the hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue losses brought about by the explosion in OTT services, operators were left with the unpalatable task of investing to support the associated consumption of network resources. Single OTT applications like WhatsApp and Netflix have had immediate and lasting impacts on how the largest operators plan for increasingly unpredictable network demands. The good news is that, if these operators have successfully addressed the challenges of OTT, they should have the right approach and tools in place to contend with everything IoT has to throw at them.
Like OTT, the impact of IoT goes far beyond the mobile access network alone.
The mistaken assumption with IoT is that endpoints are mobile, and thus necessitate mobile connectivity. Irrespective of whether the ‘thing’ is hardwired, dependent upon a cellular or satellite network for its connectivity, or harnesses short-range wireless technologies like Bluetooth and ANT+ for a machine-to-machine interface, the extra loads heaped upon the backhaul network are the same. Available capacity is being squeezed, and quality of service is in danger of becoming compromised.
It’s still a long way off, but if – as many anticipate – ratified 5G standards are to arrive by the early 2020s, prudence would see the wise operatorsbegin planning for it now. 2020 looks set to be a pivotal year, with the US government and European Commission (on behalf of its 28 member states), amongst others targeting this arbitrary line in the sand as a deadline date for ubiquitous superfast broadband services; putting more pressure on existing broadband networks to cope, and for new optical infrastructures to be created. Tick tock, tick tock…
By 2020, 50 billion ‘things’ will be connected to the Internet, five times more than today. It’s an eye-watering scale, but still just a drop in the ocean. An amazing 99.7% of the connectable ‘things’ that exist globally would still be unplugged.
So not such a revolution after all. At least, not yet…
By ADTRAN’s Ronan Kelly Elected Treasurer & Vice President of FTTH Council Europe
