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Internet of Things
How
machine-to-machine technology is making inroads into our daily lives
Imagine a situation where you
are driving down the highway at night and your car hits a divider. It’s not
a major accident but you need help and there is virtually no network on
your mobile phone. Wouldn’t it be perfect if your car could send out a
distress signal and your GPS co-ordinates as soon as it hit that divider so
that help could reach you as soon as possible?
Or imagine you walk into a healthcare booth, stick
your hand in a machine that diagnoses you and sends your prescription to
the nearest chemist. Using your Aadhaar number perhaps, the payment is
automatically debited and the medicines are home delivered in the next few
hours.
None of this is as far fetched as it may seem at
first glance. Machine to machine (M2M) technology is already a part of our
daily lives. M2M, also called the ‘internet of things’ or ‘connected
devices’ is an emerging area in telecom technology where communication
between two devices can be remotely managed or monitored through a central
server. For instance, many countries have a system in place where cars need
not stop at toll booths as there is a pre-paid card in the car from which
the toll is automatically deducted as you approach the booth. A more common
example is the satellite based navigation systems that almost all new cars
come with. At present, the M2M market in India is primarily made up of
short range modules like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and Zigbee. For it to be really
successful, it needs to shift towards cellular and satellite models.
Himanshu Kapania, managing director, Idea Cellular
says, “M2M has been historically managed by wired systems, but with
increased coverage and bandwidth availability, M2M manufacturers are
shifting towards wireless based mobile communication systems.” Using M2M,
Idea has worked with Hindustan Petroleum and Indian Oil to automate the
booking process for LPG cylinders in 16 states in India.
A recent report put out by Deloitte in
collaboration with CII and the MIT School of Telecom Management, Pune,
estimates this to be a $4.5 trillion opportunity by 2020, with 24 billion
connected devices globally. In India, the industry is still at a nascent
stage, but Kapania reckons it has the potential to reach $100 million by
2016. Hemant Joshi, telecom leader, Deloitte India says, “In India we have
bottlenecks to growth in a number of areas and many of these can be solved
using M2M applications. This would be particularly beneficial in sectors
like agriculture, utilities and healthcare.”
While M2M can be used by almost all industries,
some of the early adaptors have been auto, healthcare and appliances that
go into making a smart home. Wipro has introduced a device that patients
can wear as a necklace or belt which tracks heart rates and transmits the
data to their doctor’s smartphone. Similar applications can be hugely
beneficial especially in rural areas where access to a trained doctor is
not always possible.
Sameer Pise, chief information officer, Volkswagen
India, points out that within the automobile sector, M2M applications are
already fairly popular, such as the theft control feature. “Going ahead,
the applications could be varied. Perhaps the way you drive could actually
determine your insurance premium by linking it to the number of times you
brake rashly,” he says.
Cars are gradually going the Dell way, says Rajiv
Jorapur, head IT, Mercedes-Benz India. “Today, it’s possible to decide what
colour the car should be painted just as it’s entering the paintshop,
making it easier to customise it to customer preferences. M2M enables you
to do this as late as possible,” he says. This is a welcome change from a
situation where there may have been 50 red cars in the inventory, but the
customer would have to wait three months to get a black one.
Safety is one of the foremost features that matters
when buying a new car. Using M2M, the situation described above need not be
hypothetical, but it also begs the question whether we have the ecosystem
to support such a model in India even if the technology comes through. That
will be one of the biggest roadblocks to the spread of M2M, given the
number of government and private agencies that will have to come together
on a common platform.
The power sector is another area where the
potential to benefit from M2M is tremendous. Ananth Chandramouli, head of
utilities, Infosys, points out that in India, the power sector has been
among the slowest adopters of technology. “A smart grid can fix many of the
existing issues on both the transmission and generation side,” he says.
Grid collapses, like the one that affected large parts of North India last
year can easily be avoided by collecting information on grid health and
with real time analysis of the readings. Similarly, power theft can be
fixed using smart meters which would automatically shut down if someone
tries to tamper with them. Some of these initiatives are gradually being
rolled out in a few cities.
Deloitte’s Joshi says the government needs to view
this as a strategic opportunity and make it easier for companies to provide
this sort of connectivity: “Fibre and telecom are the backbone of M2M, and
while the government is laying out a fibre network, it will still take a
few years to get to the level needed.”
Along with making things convenient for the
consumer, M2M has the potential to transform business through new
applications and by opening up newer revenue streams. What is required is
for industry and government to come together to enable this change. Who
knows, the driverless concept car from Google might soon be a reality.
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