IoT can bring light to the lives of the poorest by next Diwali, but are we ready yet?
As Techno-Sales people traversing across different geographical and cultural boundaries, we are often excited by what we see as the future unfolding before us. And in the Diwali of 2019, as I was on the road yet again criss-crossing across Middle East, I could not help but wonder what Diwali 2020 would look for the millions living in resource poor settings across the World.
IoT (Internet of Things) has brought to reality a plethora of things that only existed in Sci Fi so far. A home where you can control the light, water, kitchen appliances from miles away? Check. Driverless cars. Check. Environmental monitoring for disaster management? Check. And so much more…You name it, we have it.
IoT can revolutionize education, improve health and safety for the poor and marginalized, harness natural resources to generate green clean electricity…Then why is it not operational yet?
IoT relies greatly on 5G being operational. In turn 5G is dependent on Latency, Connection Density and Throughput. Our key struggle lies in the Throughput space. Throughput quite simply put is the number of data packets that can be transmitted per second.
Imagine the National Highway. What if the number of trucks or cars or any vehicle that can go through the highway in one second defines how great the highway is and determines if a super car can travel on it? Now apply this logic to our connectivity. That’s where we are struggling.
Our towers are currently loaded with antennas that have limited capacities of communication. And then the data centers which are regionally situated and its concomitant communication channel ends up being slower because of the same (RF) Radio Frequency technology usage for both input/output channel. In order to be able to increase the Throughput we will have to upgrade these antennas and the technology behind from Radio Frequency now.
The possibly most cost effective way to get 5G off the ground in resource poor settings is by enabling the cloud infrastructure. Bandwidths at which 5G works is way higher and in frequencies of (MHz) Megahertz using millimeter wave (MMW) / extremely high frequency (EHF). But that’s not the only piece on this massive chess board.
The current (KHz) Kilohertz unit of measure does not cut it. Going back to our highway, that’s like measuring the efficacy of the highway based on the number of vehicles that can go through 24 hours while what we need to do is measure its efficacy based on the number going through in a mere fraction of seconds.
Greensill, the company best known for providing working capital to the mobile industry estimates the global cost of 5G infrastructure investment and enabling IoT to be $2.7 trillion by the end of 2020. This sure is a huge investment.
So far, the cost has been incremental to number of devices, babysteps from analog (1G) to 2G and onward. GSMA intelligence reflects that India had close to 750 million unique subscribers at the end of 2018 — a figure that “will grow significantly over the coming years to reach almost 920 million by 2025”. India alone will generate almost a quarter of the world’s new mobile subscribers over this period. To cater to this influx, a whole infrastructural revamp has to happen. Current capacities with 4G being at 20k devices per square kilometer range would need scaling to the tune of almost 100X to meet the expected minimum of 10million devices per square kilometer.
The ROI (Return On Investment) will be significant in the long run. IoT itself can be the backbone of most development solutions and in turn create a sharp hike in GDP.
But this would mean taking some tough calls — for the future. We don’t yet know if we can afford the upfront cost. And if yes, what strings (if any) come attached with it.
Till we get this right, we will be unable to reap in the harvest of IoT for good.
And, here I am miles away from home, fascinated with what technology if deployed right can do; and looking at us in 2020 with Diwali still being in the dark for many.
First published:
October 29th, 2019 ; Link: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/iot-can-bring-light-lives-poorest-next-diwali-we-ready-nitin-chirdeep/
Note: The story has undergone minor edits in keeping with the publishing date on Medium.
