The IoT market is growing rapidly. Mobile connectivity is becoming more and more a key success factor for many IoT projects, as most use cases are designed for mobility. But even for scenarios with immobile endpoints it often makes sense to include mobile connectivity as a fallback option, especially for time critical services.
The proposal idea is the “wherever SIM” that provides the network coverage wherever devices may roam – integrating 400+ radio networks in 160+ countries all around the world. SIM cards and endpoints can be easily managed in real-time via the intuitive user-interface or directly from the customer’s software application via an easy-to-integrate API.
The developing process, key features and security issues will be discussed.
9. Challenges
The view of the SIM card as a provider of data collection
The view of the companies with the SIM-based solutions
The interaction between SIM card provider and companies
11. Criteria 1: Connection
Permanent connection
to the device –
wherever it is
Best coverage worldwide
with just a single SIM card
wherever SIM
is able to switch to the
strongest network
12. Criteria 2: Advanced Security
Restrict access to IPs Lock SIM cards to an
particular device
(IMEI lock)
Secure communication via
VPN
13. Criteria 3: Complexity and Time
Faster access to the
worldwide market
One SIM card
for any country
One technical
integration point
14. Criteria 4: Flexibility
SIM cards for
industrial applications
Long life span
and designed for
harsh environments
Embedded SIM
for the automotive sector
and others
15. Criteria 5: Control and Automatization
Direct control over
SIM cards
Manage SIM cards in
real time
User friendly
customer portal
and API
24. Karina Popova
Telephone: +49 (40) 88 88 08-71
Email: kapo@whatevermobile.com
whatevermobile.com /whatevermobile /whatevermobile
Get in touch with us!
Hinweis der Redaktion
My name is Karina Popova, I am a developer evangelist @ whatever mobile.
And I welcome you to my presentation. Today we will talk about a sim-based connectivity solution for IoT.
"whatever mobile GmbH" is a well-known german service provider that specializes in mobile technologies. For nearly 14 years we have been working closely together with our clients which gave us an excellent overview about the needs for mobile connectivity for IoT devices.
To give you a brief introduction about the company: we have 50 excellent employees, almost 80 mill. transactions per month with 23 mill. € revenue in 2015, we provide access to more than 400 mobile networks worldwide, with excellent platform availability.
During our presentation will give you an overview about IoT Trends and SIM cards, regards new paradigm of Multi-network SIm cards. And how they could improve the quality of our daily life. We will show you some use cases and solutions in this area. We view the given project as both a corrective to the IoT trend and an opportunity to develop innovative methods to improving quality of life in different fields, such as energy, automotive, industrial, hospitality, healthcare, retail, entertainment and even financial services. We believe that our advanced studies of mobile technologies in combination with our analytical mindset will allow users to streamline the needs of their daily work and also help to spread awareness of IoT trends and potential of Multi-network SIm cards among industries.
The Internet of Things is converting the objects that surround us everyday into a community of information that will increase the quality of our lives. From small devices to houses, the IoT is leading more and more things into the digital fold every day. Sensors are necessary to turn billions of objects into data-generating “things” that can report on their status, and in some cases, interact with their environment. At the moment, cities are at a crossroads where they must choose to either use or lose the transformative potential of big data. It is a great opportunity for companies to learn how to engage with their environment positively, and for this to happen sim based solutions must be utilized in an open and compelling manner to use. Many companies are already on board with a sim-based project and more are certain to join.
Advances in IoT and the widespread availability of smartphones have provided us with powerful applications that allow us to perform daily tasks. The insights to be gained from data are endless. In the light of this a new paradigm of IoT has emerged, in which the quality of life of citizens in dense urban environments is increased through the use of big data and cloud technology. Future cities are likely to feature thousands of strategically placed sensors that will record everything from air pressure and temperature and the data will be relayed instantly to the laptops of actively participating parties. Sensing IoT is about combining the power of up-to-date mobile sensor devices with their sim built-in sensor and data-capture technology. Sim card solutions are based on the idea of transferring data from mobile-workforce management to existing desktop applications.
Developed online platforms for managing data from the sensors make it possible not only to load data from sensors, compute dynamic forecasts and conduct analytical work based on that data, but also to provide greater transparency of calculations in the different sectors of life. For example, platforms can facilitate interaction between users and service providers, allow developers to build real-time schedules and plans directly on websites, analyze incoming information and send the results to the appropriate controls for real-time monitoring and management decisions. That is not the traditional approach, where individual elements of the system are independent of each other, and the integration into a coherent whole is not always successful.
The IoT market is growing rapidly. Mobile connectivity is becoming more and more a key success factor for many IoT projects, as most use cases are designed for mobility. But even for scenarios with immobile endpoints it often makes sense to include mobile connectivity as a fallback option, especially for time critical services. Understanding mobility patterns is still largely an enigma, which makes it an extremely compelling project topic. With telecom access a large-scale investigation is now possible. Mobile phones are used pervasively, and the use of mobile communications by telecom provide extensive immediate proxy of individual trajectories and social relationships. The extensive use of mobile phones implies that this data captures a large part of the devices or the population. A huge number of records means we can reconstruct many important aspects of daily routines. Given the ubiquity of mobile phones, SIM based solutions can achieve an unbelievable level of coverage in both space and time for observing events.
The current business project addresses the challenge of making sense of existing devices and to generate new technologies from crowdsourcing, soliciting information in the IoT context from three different perspectives:
1. The view of the Sim card as a provider of data collection in different areas.
2. The view of the companies for whom the concept of SIM based solution makes sense if it implies a better quality of life, sustainability, a higher degree of safety or better control.
3. The interaction between sim card provider and companies as actors providing solutions and data that benefit each other.
But if mobile connectivity is bound to a single network you simply won’t always have the quality of network coverage that you need. Therefore, we proposed the idea of the wherever SIM that provides the multi network coverage wherever devices may roam. Integration of data collections into existing workflows on a single platform is the most important element in daily work, because it allows to optimize the collection of data, help with crowdsourcing issues, process information from different subsystems, improve the quality of decision-making services in real time, and avoid redundant IT infrastructure by various departments of the company. One of the main objectives of our project was to investigate the common characteristics and requirements for sensing applications, and secondly, based on the requirements, design and develop a MULTI sim based solution to quickly, efficiently and effortlessly deploy it. Different items measured the success criteria of the whole project.
Think if your project requires the permanent connection on the device at any place with the maximum possible existing coverage worldwide, and ability to switch to the strongest network.
The mobile connectivity with no preferred connection gives you a faster and easier way to the market, worldwide coverage provides global access instantly and you don’t need to check which operator is in the area where all your devices situated, every time it will be connected to the strongest network.
Determine if the communication can be restricted to certain IPs.
Do you need the SIM card locked function to a specific device, to make sure it cannot be used by unauthorized people?
If encryption is essential for you make sure that the integration to the customer’s network can be done via VPN and has a firewall.
Choose the right way to communicate with the device, don’t miss the opportunity to use static IP, establish bidirectional communication and status monitoring.
With a simple push notification it is much easier to update and maintain the device: either connecting it or debugging it.
You can have cards with extended endurance for industrial applications, which means you can use the device in harsh environments or for a significant amount of time, which for example is ideal for the automotive sector.
Consider the direct control over all SIM cards is one of the most important features, where you can manage the data in real time and check and adjust data usage, location and status of your devices in one customer portal or via API.
Measuring systems for different companies and countries is a complex task, and a scoreboard of indicators covering a number of relevant dimensions is needed for this purpose. The different form factors and packaging are possible, which could be suitable for indoor and outdoor IoT applications. Some of them could be resistant to shocks, vibrations, and humidity. The temperature range could be from -40 to 105 Celsius degrees.
It is very important to derive requirements for a SIM based solutions for particular customer and propose reference architecture for a generic framework. The next phase of project consisted the implementation of the framework and tests on concrete application area in order to empirically work on non-technical issues such as incentive mechanisms and quality/quantity of collected data. The last step is the necessity of development a generative approach, which means automatically configuring the required elements for the major customers, based on the specifications given in the use case definition. This includes monitoring on customer side, which may lead to control measures like changing parameters of the incentive mechanism (if too many or too few data has been collected, or if a specific sub-area must be covered better); observations may also lead to the creation of new data collection tasks, e.g., for verifying outlier data or for getting more detail on especially important reports.
So in this way we see our implicit goal of developing MULTI-network SIM based connectivity solutions for IoT as increasing the quality of life, or the general well-being of individuals and society as a whole. Keeping in mind the aims of the 2020 Transition Idea of IT projects emphasizing novel forms of participation, open source data, and training the next generation of users, this solution offers crowdsourcing technology to develop and launch a prototype application that will solicit feedback and improve life with the help of SIM based connectivity. A key component of the project is the integration of mobile technology to maximize the utility of continues measurements taken by companies that are both spatially and temporarily dislocated. It provides unique opportunities for its use in a wide range of applications.
Let's discuss the use cases for our SIM based connectivity solution.
We will start with the automotive or telematics area. The problem statement can be formulated in the following way. Car rentals, delivery services and logistics enterprises are investing a lot of time and energy in fleet management. But they are not yet able to track location, mileage and fuel consumption of their fleet in real-time and cross-national. Inspection, maintenance and driver’s assessment are complicated and time-consuming. Location tracking can be problematic when borders are crossed and foreign networks have to be used.
How we can use Wherever SIM as the solution:
m2m makes fleet management much easier. A small stick is plugged into the vehicle and delivers all relevant data via mobile network to an enterprise software that can be run on desktop or smartphone. Mileage, fuel consumption and operational state of the vehicle can be monitored in real-time. This simplifies stocktaking and helps to detect damages.
The advantage of multi-network SIM cards is that they have a worldwide network connection. Hence fleet management is made more economic by real-time location tracking and route optimization. At the same time the drivers are involved. Gamification makes driving more secure and energy-efficient. After every journey the driver gets an individual score for his driving style and incentives to improve.
The next case deals with health care.
Imagine you are 82 and still feeling quite fit. But you have high blood pressure that needs to be observed and your children are worried about you staying alone at your home. They’d rather have you move to an assisted accommodation, but you would like to stay in your home.
How we can use Wherever SIM as the solution:
Thanks to new wearables senior citizens are able to live an independent live much longer. They can track temperature, blood pressure, blood sugar etc. and are able to identify unusual lack of movement or falls. If any figure reaches a critical state your doctor or relatives will automatically be informed. The connection is not dependent on an internet connection. It can also use the mobile network to transmit data or trigger an emergency call if something happens while the senior is in the supermarket. This keeps relatives from worrying and gives elderly people the freedom to stay in their home longer without having to relinquish security and medical supervision.
And the last case, which we would like to discuss, would be from agriculture industry.
The UN predicts an increase in world population to over 11 billion by 2100. All these people will have to be fed. In addition unsustainable farming is having negative environmental impacts. Farming of the future has to be more efficient and reduce environmental pollution at the same time.
How we can use Wherever SIM as the solution:
Precision farming is a new farming management concept tailored to the specific conditions of every field. The immense effort of permanent surveillance and caretaking is supported by new technologies, for example drones. In terms of animal protection drones can locate fawn and other wild animals that are killed by mowing-machines every year. With their micro sensors they detect water and nutrient deficits, analyse the soil conditions and the degree of ripeness of the crop. This data is transferred to the farmer’s software application and enables an resource-saving, environmental friendly farming of the land. Their infrared camera identifies pest-infested crops and weeds, so that herbicides can only be applied where actually needed. New ways of biologic pest control emerge which are more precise and cost-effective. For instance, drones can distribute beneficial insects over the fields.
We expect the main result of the current project to be a practical recommendation to all IoT customers. That companies have learned the basics of multi-network sim-based solution, how to keep track of sensors, and how to translate their individual efforts into actionable results that benefit the company. As a secondary outcome, this project will come to conclusions, based on evaluations and feedback from future customers, about the advantages and drawbacks of multi-network solutions. This will hopefully lead to a course that could be expanded in the future to some millions of sim-based devices.
The results of participating in this project could be helpful for both customer purposes and for decision-making management level. As the result of collaboration we expect to receive the integration between different layers of data on one platform, a sensing framework with user-centric interface, the results of deployment and tests, which could be helpful to study and discuss the problems of priorities and the formation of future events for IoT.
Thank you very much for youк kind attention during my presentation today, I would be extremely happy to receive your feedback and questions any time.