Enabling Key Applications – 5 Key Takeaways
By Majdi Atout,
It was a pleasure to have been invited to speak at the NatSatTel conference, hosted on Tuesday. The panel that I joined, NGSO Constellations: Enabling Key Applications triggered some interesting discussions. I was joined by panelists from Sateliot and Intersputnik, and we certainly agreed on the transformative effect that satellite IoT offers across every industry.
Here are my 5 key takeaways from our discussion:
- The industry will need standards
As is happening across the satellite industry at present to enable virtualization, standardization was widely discussed. This will enable economies of scale and mass production of IoT devices as well as ease of integration and installation. With the advent of NGSO constellations, standardization will also be critical to enable the seamless switching between different orbits and constellations. Moreover, the standardization of terminal components will also lower the price per unit which will be pivotal for adoption of satellite IoT services.
- The use cases for satellite IoT are endless
The one thing that never ceases to amaze me is the abundance of applications that satellite IoT can satisfy. Today, APPLIOT can address approximately 85 business cases, but this is by no means the limit. In fact, we are only scratching the surface.
One interesting market for satellite IoT is fishing. We are currently engaged in four projects: in Bangladesh, in Indonesia, in Oman and in Saudi Arabia. These are large projects, with networks comprising of a minimum of tens of thousands of devices. They are being used for applications such as smart fisheries and asset tracking.
The beauty of the APPLIOT solution is that it can accommodate any type of IoT services. We are currently focused on offering widebeam services in GEO. We see that LEO is capturing a lot of what was GEO business at the moment, and there is a lot of availability on GEO capacity. We also realize that, in order to utilize VSAT services over Ku- or Ka-band requires a country license and in-country traffic landing. Widebeam is the simplest means of installing a hub in-country and meeting the telecom regulatory authority requirement. It also means that the services are very cost-effective.
The country where you are operating the system is very dependent on what kind of connectivity you offer. For example, there are countries that use IoT services for traffic that is not sensitive, but in others it is. Let’s take health, for example. The traffic generated by health IoT services cannot be carried over L-band because it has to stay within the country. We are targeting those countries with our solution. We are also focused on countries where the lower cost services are required, such as fisheries and smart farming and those areas presently unserved by GSM and satellite. There is a plethora of use cases in these countries, many that are just coming to light and some that we aren’t even aware of yet. These are exciting times for the IoT sector.
- Costs will come down
IoT services are set to fall in price, which will make them even more accessible to the wider market. We provide our services in GEO and LEO and previously, these services have been cheaper in L-band. However, with an increase in production, the cost of the terminal is expected to fall to prices less that L-band terminals today. This is expected to fall further still with the development of chipsets that incorporate all of the terminal capabilities.
- Chipsets are the future
As panelists, we all agreed that the chipset is going to be the future of IoT. At APPLIOT, we certainly believe that the future of IoT will be built on the provision of chipsets that operate as a terminal does today and can be built into the body of the assets they are monitoring. The chipsets will incorporate the antenna and RF features and capabilities seamlessly into the asset.
We are currently developing the chipset at the moment and will be developing a 5G NTN modern on an ASIC, so the whole system will be a chipset that can be built anywhere, everywhere, at any time. In addition, it will also be rapid and cost-effective to manufacture.
Let’s take the connected car, for example, or a piece of farm machinery. The chipset can be integrated into the bodywork or a windscreen. This will eventually provide a cheaper, much smaller type of terminal that will provide full functionality to the user. Service providers will deliver services in any form, and it will be the key to expanding IoT services.
- AI will be key for data processing
You have all the data from your IoT sensors, but how does that become actionable and useful to the end user?
By implementing AI into the software that translates all the data and relays it back to the user, the system can literally get to know the customer and learn about their requirements. This way, every part of the data extrapolated and assessed provides something very useful to the user. AI will become a very important feature for IoT companies moving forward as it will be a key factor in the ability to make decisions about businesses. Thanks again to my fellow panelists and moderator, Virgil Labrador, for a compelling discussion. As standards are adopted, economies of scale realized and innovations continually evolving, IoT solutions and service providers can look forward to a very bright future.
