Connected devices sharing information over the internet — the essence of the “Internet of Things” (IoT) — has been with us for some time now in one form or another. Indeed, depending on whom you ask, the telegraph may qualify as the first example of this phenomenon if one allows for a wide interpretation of the “internet.”
The development of the telephone in the early 19th century would also qualify as would radar-tracking technology used extensively during WW2. Forbes Media referenced the invention of the barcode in 1949 to be among the Internet of Things.
For most, the first real example of IoT that went beyond point-to-point communication and included different devices involved an experiment at Carnegie Melon during the 1970s where students repurposed an early version of a local internet, connecting it to microswitches to remotely monitor the usage of a vending machine. They were able to determine whether a cold soft drink bottle would be available before venturing down the hallway to purchase their favourite beverage.
In 1990, John Romkey connected a toaster to the internet for the very first time using a TCP/IP connection. One year later, scientists at the University of Cambridge came up with a web camera prototype to monitor the amount of coffee available in their local lab’s coffee pot. They programmed a webcam to take intermittent photos that were then sent to local computers, thereby allowing viewers to see if coffee was available.
In 1999, Kevin Ashton, a technology thought leader, coined the term “Internet of Things” in a presentation he gave for Procter & Gamble on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology. An RFID tag consists of a tiny radio receiver and transmitter — a transponder — and uses electromagnetic fields to automatically identify and track tags attached to objects.
The first iPhone was released in 2007, and soon after in 2009, Cisco asserted that the Internet of Things was officially born — when more objects became connected to the Internet than people.
A variant of the Internet of Things also appeared in the industrial sector, where machine-to-machine (M2M) communication was on the rise. Whereas IoT focused on a network of devices connected to the internet and increasingly leveraging big data/cloud intelligence, M2M focused more on direct communication between two or more machines. Exactly when M2M technology emerged is uncertain. Some reference the earliest form of telemetry in 1912 or the invention of RADAR in the 1930s. However, Theodore Paraskevakos is considered the father of M2M with his early work on what would become Caller ID in 1968.
Internet communication protocols would also evolve. The internet, initially part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 1962, later became ARPANET in 1969, and upon receiving more commercial support became what we have today. Further government and commercial investment in the years to follow led to Global Positioning Satellites (GPS) which augmented IoT communication capabilities — ushering in an era of rapid IoT growth punctuated by the addition of IoT, for the first time, to the Gartner Hype Cycle for emerging technologies in 2011. Not coincidentally, IPV6 was launched to the public that same year, enabling more traffic across the internet to be delivered with greater reliability and security [Note: Curiously, IPV6 became an “Internet Standard” only in 2017]. More recently, M2M has been subsumed into the broader industrial IoT (IIoT) / Industry 4.0 ecosystem, where increasing amounts of data are shared between machines via the internet for the purpose of streaming or automating industrial operations across diverse industry verticals. In 2012, Cisco expanded on IoT by introducing the notion of Internet of Everything (IoE) consisting of 4 pillars — people, data, process, and things. A few years later, various marketing circles started referring to the emerging Internet of Experiences (IoX), and most recently (in 2019/20), Gartner refers to the growing role of Internet of Behaviors (IoB). See the figure below for a summary of the IoT historical timeline.
Emerging 5G/IoT Market Dynamics
Today, more and more devices continue to be connected over increasingly robust networks, carrying larger payloads at accelerating speeds. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, Amazon, and a growing number of manufacturing companies are poised to accelerate this trend as businesses and consumers alike stand at the ready to purchase and use new products and services, spanning a bewildering spectrum of use cases across all industry verticals (see figure below).
IoT connectivity options are expanding rapidly with the launch of mobile 5G, WiFi-6, and new licensed (cellular) low -power wide area network (LPWAN) solutions (NB-IoT, LTE-M) complementing and competing with earlier launches of unlicensed (non-cellular) LPWAN options, such as Sigfox and LoraWAN. According to recent (2020) modeling from Ericsson, there are about 1 billion global cellular IoT connections today — a number expected to grow to approximately 5 billion by 2025. ABI research forecasts that the market will shift from an approximate 80/20 split today, favoring noncellular, to a 40/60 split in the next 5 years, favouring cellular connectivity. To be clear, these cellular connectivity solutions are currently supported within the 4G/LTE construct, but will rapidly be transitioned over the next few years to support 5G. Omdia has projected that ~10% of global IoT devices will fall into the “industrial” category by 2024.
With mobile becoming an increasingly key component of IoT connectivity, it is noteworthy that mobile contributes ~5% to overall GDP across the globe according to the the GSMA. Also, by 2025, 5G will represent approximately 50% of connections in North America, attesting to the aggressive anticipated 5G growth. Moreover, given that a growing number of IoT use cases require some form of edge computing, it is important to address growth trends in this market segment. To this end, the Linux Foundation released its latest 2021 State of the Edge Report. Key findings include:
- Cumulative CAPEX (up to 2028) of up to $800 billion USD will be spent on new and replacement IT server equipment and edge computing facilities.
- “In the short to medium term, infrastructure edge demand for Enterprise IT will be driven by cloud service use cases that are complemented and enhanced with edge computing capabilities. However, it is predicted that in the long-term, Infrastructure Edge demand will be driven by ‘edge native’ use cases that can only function when edge computing capabilities are available.” Hence, “edge native” (vs “cloud native”) now enters the lexicon! This has significant implications across talent, process, and technology.
- Key high growth verticals include healthcare, automotive, smart cities, smart grid, and manufacturing.
Impact of COVID-19 of IoT Market
Data from a GSMA Intelligence Report suggest that although the number of IoT connections is expected to double by 2025, the pandemic will wipe out ~200 billion in IoT revenues. Moreover:
“In the short term, the economic uncertainty could constrain demand and funding for IoT projects. However, every crisis leaves a long-lasting legacy in terms of faster innovation and a new ‘normal’. It is reasonable to assume that Covid-19 will lead to faster adoption among companies of IoT, AI/ML and 5G among other technologies to drive digital transformation.”
What about IoT Privacy and Security?
The privacy challenges associated with a growing intelligent surveillance infrastructure — further amplified by this pandemic — have been discussed in detail in a previous McGill 5G related blog post. As 5G/Edge powered IoT hyperconnectivity continues to accelerate over the coming decade, this challenge will increasingly assume center stage in citizen/government/political engagement, particularly in the West.
Parallel to the privacy battle, equally important and growing concerns over security — and related risk management practices — are being driven by several factors including:
- Exponential growth of IoT device count — Cisco predicts that the number of DDoS attacks will double to 15M+ by 2023.
- Complexity of the IoT ecosystem given the diversity of technologies, standards, and stakeholders, as well as emerging techno-geopolitics driving challenges with IoT security governance.
- Although it’s likely 7–10+ years away, the coming “Y2Q” (post quantum) cybersecurity tsunami will have fundamental impacts on the growth and success of the IoT ecosystem.
So exactly what is an IoT “platform” and what use cases does it enable? What are the key standards and technologies and who are the industry stakeholders? Unpacking the complexity of this IoT ecosystem is discussed in Part 2 - IoT Ecosystem: Technology, Platforms, and 5G Target Use Cases.
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