Deutsche Telekom (DT) and its subsidiary T-Mobile US have launched T-IoT, a springboard for global internet of things (IoT) connectivity. It solves the problem that global companies have with IOTs that are a jumble of management and billing systems, by integrating them into one manageable system.
The problem with global IoT is that the contracts and services attached to IoT jobs are inconsistent across the globe, explains the DT blog that announced the service. The new T-IOT management and support system gives enterprises one team and one systematic manager of every connection on the globe. The cross-borders service straddles 383 networks and reaches across 188 destinations worldwide.
“As America’s 5G leader, with the fastest, largest, and most reliable network, we’re writing the rules of the 5G era, and we’re doing it in favour of customers and businesses,” said Mike Katz, the president of the T-Mobile business group. “With T-IoT we’re poised to help businesses realise the true potential of IoT by completely disrupting the status quo of how it’s purchased and managed.”
Carriers make enterprises jump through hoops to manage IoT connectivity globally, says DT’s official blog. As a result, few enterprises have got value for money from the IoT or got the full performance. The valuable business insights the low operational costs and the magical customer experiences never materialised.
The reason for the failure is that multinational IoT connections are created by enterprises cobbling together a patchwork of operator agreements, all with different contracts, service level agreements, management interfaces, and customer support, says DT.
Though 5G promises to take IoT to the next level, with cellular 5G IoT connections projected to make up 57 percent of all worldwide cellular IoT connections by 2025, a better computer can’t improve a bad business process – it just makes it more efficiently bad.
“If 5G creates low-latency, massive data use and connects a hundred times more devices than then enterprises have a huge opportunity to embrace new use cases and actionable data,” said DT.
But the reality gap between the promise and delivery of 5G IoT will huge because managing all that connectivity and data is needlessly complex.
The early pioneers global IoT might have millions of tracked assets moving across the globe. To stay connected to those assets, they have to negotiate numerous contracts with multiple network operators in different countries and regions, each with its own contract and service level agreements. Then, to view and manage those devices, they navigate a multitude of platforms from various operators. For every issue that arises, there are different customer care and support teams.
Each carrier has its own payment model which makes it hard for businesses to effectively scale IoT across the globe. When 5G materialises as an IoT network, scaling will be even more difficult. But the problem must be cracked in order to deliver valuable use cases, analytics, data insights and a return-on-investment.
DT and T-Mobile say they have solved the problem by tackling the way enterprises pay for IoT. An early pioneer was global health care provider Biotronik which monitors patient’s vital data using the I-IoT. If certain threshold values are exceeded, its medical team can react immediately. “This only works with an absolutely sound network that transmits the data reliably at all times” said Volker Lang, R&D VP at global healthcare brand Biotronik. “We are active in 5,000 hospitals over 100 countries. The T-IoT infrastructure is indispensable for us.”
There are four main elements of this T-IoT platform: omnipresent network connectivity, a single view, simple procurement and flexible pricing. One network, one view, one stop shop and one bill.
DT says can provide global connections that with technology to support nearly every possible IoT scenario there is, including NB-IoT, LTE-M, LTE and 5G. It has a single system that can manage global IoT connections across several platforms, including T-Mobile Control Center and the DT M2M Service Portal.
A simple procurement process streamlines contract and billing, makes consistent global service level agreements and offers customer support. The Flexible pricing is a choice between a ‘pay-per-data’ model and three flat-rate unlimited connectivity packages (T-IoT Unlimited Base, T-IoT Unlimited Premium, and T-IoT Unlimited Pro) across the U.S. and Europe. There are also value added services to ensure connectivity for the lifetime of the device.
“One provider – one solution: that’s making it simple,” said Hagen Rickmann, Telekom Deutschland’s MD of business customers. “Industries like healthcare and automotive that depend on international supply chains can’t get a supply chain of service and assistance anywhere in the world. We’re able to do that now.”