Security Risk
South African Enterprises
Changing Lives
This brings new opportunities, for example: smart water metering, which has no power source, and smart parking monitoring, which could be in lower basement parking bays where cellular connectivity tends to be very weak.
We will see an extension of battery life to over 10 years, enabling the monitoring of many things – which was previously not possible due to power source limitations.
Through the improved coverage and increase in the number of devices supported within a cell, NB-IoT allows us to connect the billions of things around the world that analysts have been predicting for years.
Security Risk
Having many things connected across the Internet becomes a potential security risk, though, as this opens targets for attackers. Many LPWAN technologies leave security up to the integrator to implement, and in others the details are still unclear.
As NB-IoT is based on an approved standard, security is integrated into the network layer – ensuring it is covered at every level in the ecosystem.
South African Enterprises
What does NB-IoT mean for South Africa and local enterprise? Over the past year, we have seen significant growth in the number of things which are connected to the Internet. In the second half of 2016, Vodacom reported a 27.7 % increase in our IoT base – growing to 2.6 million.
The new NB-IoT technology will benefit faster deployment, more effective connectivity, and better suitability for the types of use cases that we are building to optimally connect things – including cold chain, smart asset management, and connected agriculture.
One of the key questions that remains is how NB- IoT will be monetised. Put simply, the monetisation potential lies largely in services. There is accelerated growth coming from utilities – mainly driven by the need to better manage electricity and water supply, as an example.
We face significant socio-economic challenges in South Africa, which includes the availability of electricity, water, and security. As a result, we are seeing growth rates in the utilities sector, such as smart metering.
In the health sector, NB-IoT technology supports the wider delivery of basic healthcare services in rural areas. An example of this is Vodacom’ s Stock Visibility Solution, an IoT platform developed and deployed in rural clinics to manage the process to reduce drug stock-outs.
This solution is now used in over 3,000 South African clinics and we are in the process of deploying it in harder-to-reach areas across the continent, including Mozambique, Tanzania, and Nigeria.
Changing Lives
Mobile technology has changed people’ s lives. Imagine the next step in terms of billions of things being connected, communicating with each other and other objects, spaces, and places – improving our lives without us being aware of them.
NB-IoT technology will accelerate the adoption of IoT and will fast-track the number of devices which will be connected. It will also accelerate new use cases, creating new industries and value propositions.
Studies have shown that 70 % of IoT opportunities lie in enterprise. In South Africa and Africa, an opportunity exists in connecting urban areas and communities. We are going to increasingly see local and regional municipalities looking to technology to help them solve their current challenges.
Vodafone’ s 2016 IoT Barometer Report shows that South African business leaders feel more confident about the benefits of IoT, seeing it as strategicallyimportant in terms of their sustainability.
This means the local economy is positive about the adoption of this technology and what it can offer. A rapid deployment of LPWANs like the NB-IoT network Vodacom is deploying, combined with communication modules becoming more affordable, will transform value chains for goods and services, supporting economic growth in South Africa. ■
“ In the past, ecosystems and the Internet were built for people: we are now building and orchestrating an entire new ecosystem for things, to improve human lives.”
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