Indian telecom operators’ lack of interest in buying 5G spectrum till 2019 indicates that their chance to grab the IoT business opportunity will be in jeopardy for some time.
Indian telecom operators such as Airtel, Idea Cellular, Vodafone, Reliance Jio, among others are not yet ready for building the IoT networks in India to generate revenue from enterprise business. Tata Communications, Vodafone, Anil Ambani-promoted Unlimit, among others are just getting ready for the IoT bandwagon. 5G will boost IoT revenue streams.
COAI’s director general Rajan Mathews says the government should auction the costly 5G spectrum in 2019 in order to better understand the market potential. Indian telecoms will be able to make investment in 5G networks after two years due to the current financial health of the telecom sector.
Telecoms in IoT
Singtel Singapore plans $500 million investment to enable smart city technology platforms and infrastructure. Telstra in Australia is planning $100 million investment, according to a report by Frost & Sullivan.
Telekom Malaysia plans to build a data center and provide cloud computing and smart services in a technology park.
Connectivity will be a key enabler while designing an omni-channel experience platform across all touch points including online and mobile. Data from sensors will enable technologies to integrate softer aspects, such as customer perception and citizen awareness.
South Korea and Singapore beat China in NB-IoT network deployment, according to Lian Jye Su of ABI Research.
In July 2017, Korea Telecom and LG Uplus launched the world’s first NB-IoT network in South Korea. M1 launched their nationwide NB-IoT network in Singapore. This means the world’s first two NB-IoT networks are in Asia Pacific.
SK Telecom, which is leading in South Korea’s transition to 5G, selected in December 2016 to focus on LTE-M and LoRa.
The focus of SK Telecom on LTE-M is similar to the decisions by the major U.S. carriers, as SK Telecom aims to target the market for IoT devices that require more bandwidth and throughput, as well as VoLTE support, leaving LoRa to handle less sophisticated IoT devices.
Singapore’s Singtel responded to the M1 launch by announcing its LTE-M and NB-IoT network rollout on the same day as M1 announcement.
China will see $180 billion investment — announced in June 2017 — to create the world’s largest 5G network.
China Mobile is the world’s largest IoT company with over 100 million connections in 2016. China is losing steam with regards to NB-IoT nationwide networks.
In May 2017, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) announced its target for NB-IoT, namely 400,000 cell sites with NB-IoT connectivity and 20 million NB-IoT connections by 2017.
China currently has 5.6 million cell sites. 400,000 cell sites mean less than 10 percent of China’s cell sites support NB-IoT. Despite the cheap cost of upgrading at $10,000 per site, the number of cell sites that require upgrades will hamper NB-IoT deployment, especially in the rural areas, in China.
China Mobile is facing challenges in substituting its existing GPRS network with NB-IoT. China Mobile faced telecom regulatory restriction in refarming its existing 2G network and does not carry any FDD LTE licenses, which restricted its ability to deploy commercial NB-IoT.
China Unicom announced its NB-IoT deployment on 900 MHz and 1800 MHz spectrum, with 900 MHz dedicated to rural areas. China Unicom focused its deployment in Shanghai and dual spectrum deployment has slowed down the deployment speed.
China Telecom currently has 320,000 cell sites that support NB-IoT. China Telecom is using 800 MHz for NB-IoT, benefiting from not having to support any legacy 2G networks. The decision by China Telecom to deploy NB-IoT on 800 MHz means all three carriers are likely to use different spectrum bands for NB-IoT applications, showing no economies of scale.
American cable company Comcast announced a sizeable expansion of its IoT coverage in July 2017, adding 12 metro regions.
Comcast is leveraging low-power, wide-area network (LPWAN) technology named LoRa for its IoT ambitions. LoRa, which leverages unlicensed spectrum, is more open than licensed spectrum or technology from other LPWAN competitors such as SigFox, and has a strong uptake by customers in industrial IoT.
“Comcast’s challenge will be with telecoms such as AT&T, Verizon and Vodafone. Due to Comcast’s infrastructure and metro targeting, the vendor will be targeting, again, the telecom honeypots of the smart city and utility market,” said Daniel Callahan, analyst at Technology Business Review.
Comcast also has its sights set on healthcare and automotive, but AT&T, Verizon and Vodafone have the advantage in those markets, with their licensed 4G and coming 5G networks.
IoT potential
There will be 30 billion devices — smartphones, smart homes, smart grids, and smart vehicles — connected to the Internet by the year 2020.
The IoT market is expected to achieve CAGR of 21.5 percent during the next eight years and reach $260 billion by 2025, Persistence Market Research said.
North America is the largest region in the IoT market and is a market opportunity approaching $100 billion. Asia Pacific accounts for a slightly higher CAGR and key stakeholders in the IoT market would do well to take this into consideration while devising their investment strategies.
Smart cities
Frost & Sullivan has indicated about the top 10 smart city projects in Asia Pacific and explains why China will have an upper edge. Smart city projects will drive IoT business.
Investments in smart city projects in Asia Pacific are expected to grow from $55.6 billion in 2013 to $260 billion in 2020.
There are about 10 cities that are expected to become smart cities by 2025 in the Asia-Pacific region, of which, more than 50 percent will be in China. This can include smart city projects in Japan, South Korea, Thailand and Indonesia.
Eight emerging cities also have standalone smart city projects, which when scaled-up, can achieve the smart city status by 2030 and beyond.
“Several governments are driving smarter cities in Singapore, Japan, China, and South Korea,” said Hazmi Yusof, managing director, Malaysia and senior vice president at Frost & Sullivan.
Research and Markets said the global smart city market will grow at a CAGR of around 24.4 percent over the next decade to reach $2,452 billion by 2025.
Baburajan K
