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Mobile, blockchain, and the future of the IoT
As the internet of things (IoT) markets grows, the attention is often focused on IoT devices that make up the IoT (smart appliances, smart city technologies, etc). However, behind the scenes, mobile is one of the greatest facilitators of IoT technology technology.
By their very nature, IoT devices are resource constrained. They must be because they are designed to exist far beyond corporate firewalls — and even conventional AC power sources — and perform their tasks, often untouched, for years.
The need to preserve of battery life, as well as severe cost constraints on products that might sell for a few dollars or less, means minimally sized processing units, and memory and storage that is usually measured in kilobytes, not megabytes or gigabytes. This means mobile connectivity must be done on a super-efficient, as-needed basis.
The mobile industry has made much of this possible through development of LoRa, LPWAN, and other forms of low-power, narrow bandwidth, wide area network technology that has allowed far-flung IoT devices to pass their data with efficiency, minimal energy consumption, and affordable pricing.
As the IoT continues to grow — and no one is projecting anything but growth — so will the need for communication service providers (CSPs) to enable devices to call home at minimal energy cost. Just around the corner is 5G, which will be a game changer for IoT developers and users of the technology. 5G promises network speeds up to 10-20Gbps, better reliability, and low end-to-end latency with the scale to connect many thousands of devices concurrently. With this technology, enterprises will be empowered to take valuable data from the edge and into enterprise networks where it can be better processed and harnessed. The impact to IoT can mean devices that are smaller, with better power consumption and ubiquity as the network can handle the necessary data processing. This innovation in connectivity could be the catalyst for IoT growth in autonomous vehicles, medical devices, industrial automation, smart cities and a number of other verticals.
With mobile playing such a foundational role in IoT why do we keep hearing so much about blockchain as a relevant technology? While some herald blockchain as the biggest technology milestone since the invention of the internet, it also carries (at least for some) a bit of mystery. Early on, blockchain was associated with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which in turn are often associated with being the realm of hackers, the dark web and other bad actors. The reality is that blockchain — with its immutable ledgering — could prove to be a tremendous tool for trust, validation and tracking of IoT devices, processes, and data throughout the world of business. Blockchain got its name because it consists of data blocks that require computationally intense algorithmic solutions to be performed before a new block can be added to the chain of existing data blocks. And each new block contains encrypted code from the previous one. This means that someone attempting to alter data on one block would also have to perform all of the computation required for adding all previous blocks—and do this across more than 50 percent of the globally distributed network of computers participating in the distributed storage of the blockchain. So, at least for the foreseeable future, such alterations remain essentially computationally impossible, or at least immensely impractical. This is why blockchain is frequently described as an ‘immutable’ ledger, complete with an unalterable time stamp.
IBM and others are already advertising the value of blockchain across mass media, describing its power for shipping and logistics. And Walmart recently announced it would use blockchain technology to track lettuce and other produce, as reported in the New York Times with the fanciful headline “From Farm to Blockchain: Walmart Tracks Its Lettuce.”
Behind the scenes, the RFID tags and IoT devices embedded across the supply chain—from field to truck to washing and packaging to warehouse to store, and perhaps, to consumer—will be transmitting data across an array of mobile networks. So it was encouraging to read Dawn Bushaus’s recent TM Forum dispatch Blockchain heats up, as she outlined a number of use cases for CSPs and blockchain including digital identity management, IoT disintermediation (trust capabilities) and management of cross-carrier payments. Citing the Deloitte Consulting findings, CSPs were rapidly embracing blockchain, including: The above figures deserve repeating because they underscore the fact that as IoT and blockchain merge, it will be CSPs, to a large extent, that are driving this transformation. The coming wave of connected devices also brings tremendous security concerns. For CSPs and OEMs, getting ahead of the curve with the right strategy and set of solutions to protect devices and data on 5G or low band networks is essential for IoT to reach its potential.
