IoE or EoI

We have a good shot at becoming the number one IT company in the world. That’s clearly our goal.”
John Chambers
, CEO of Cisco.

Cisco is certainly getting word out about how an IoE (Internet of Everything) is going to change the IT / networking world with its massive growth in networked sensors.

But I wonder whether our future of B/OSS could also be framed not by IoE but EoI (Everything of Internet)? By this, I mean if all of the sensors were actually able to become wireless hot-spots in their own right, as opposed to sensors having network links.

What if every one of a city’s lights had a built-in wireless network access point? Or water meters did? Or electricity switchboards?

If one of these utilities had the protocols / ability to cope with hand-offs between access points (when customers are mobile), develop a backhaul mechanism and determine usage on a customer-by-customer basis, we’d have a nearly ubiquitous access network to compete against the traditional telcos (assuming regulatory leeway).

A utility of this type would need their B/OSS to be flexible enough to handle dual-state management (or more), whereby it would need to manage and bill the wireless network as well as managing and billing the sensor or device network, each with their own unique needs.

Now throw into the mix the inherent ability for such a network to be spatially aware and you have the platform for even more innovation. Add to it the massive subscriber bases that these utilities already have, the brand credibility (when it comes to billing) and hence the relatively lower barrier to entry for adding further costs onto an existing bill than starting with a new CSP.

Perhaps there is a case of “sticking with the knitting” with those utilities sticking with what is their core business and not diversifying into becoming CSPs. Most utilities I’ve come across already have a network services department to service their own infrastructure, but the question becomes whether they can service external comms customers.

Irrespective of all these business model “what-if?” scenarios, would this be a big paradigm shift for your B/OSS?

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2 Responses

  1. Interesting thoughts. The race is on for the carriage standard for the IoT’s. WiFi, 3G, LTE, Weightless are all candidates. Then there’s the short range stuff like Bluetooth LE, NFC, the list goes on.

    Interesting to see some of the alternates emerging to WiFi. A company Nuell in the UK are have just released an ‘industrial’ carriage network solution that operates over any licensed or unlicensed spectrum can communicate from deep within buildings up to 5 Km’s and has receivers that can run for up to 15 years on 2 AA batteries.

    The Telcos and regulators are going to have a difficult time policing and keeping network revenues contained for the IoT.

  2. Hi Simon,

    Wow! Great stuff! I hadn’t heard of Nuell.
    Thanks for your contribution here on PAOSS and I look forward to seeing further brilliant insights like this.

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