The Wireless IoT Forum officially kicked off this week in a fresh attempt to achieve consensus around the standards of some 50 billion connected devices predicted to hit the market.
Piloted by IET President and former Neul executive William Webb, the main objective of the Forum is to overcome fragmentation in wide-area, wireless connectivity by building global consensus around its standards.
The group, which features names from BT and Cisco amongst its ranks and announced its founding board this week, already has its work cut out for it.
Speaking to Mobile Europe, Webb says: “There’s a normal reaction when we talk about doing this kind of thing, which is, ‘Oh no, not another forum!’ Our key difference is that we are not a standards body.
“Our objective is quite clear: to coalesce around a small number of standards to remove fragmentation. I don’t know of any other organisation that’s designed to do that in the wide-area, low-power connectivity space.”
The Forum will focus specifically on wide area technologies, which typically include those that fall beyond the range of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.
According to Webb, this encompasses a range of different technologies, one of which is the ultra narrowband (UNB) approach adopted by France-based Sigfox.
[Read more: Sigfox, Texas Instruments pushing ultra-narrowband IoT after new launches]
However, while he says UNB is “very definitely in there” as a contender, Webb points out that Sigfox’s own standard falls short in one critical area.
“One of things the Forum has said is that it will only select open standards because we think that’s the only approach that ultimately succeeds in the world of wireless communications.
“It’s entirely possible that Sigfox may change their approach to open up their standard. [Alternatively] there are many other UNB technologies that are very similar that are more open, such as Weightless-N.
“There are other approaches. LoRa is different one, which involves spreading the spectrum to a broader bandwidth. Neither has been ruled out as yet.”
The Forum has now set up four working groups with the aim of bringing tangible work to fruition within the next 12-18 months. According to Webb, each group will produce output for the Forum around application and connectivity requirements, in addition to providing input to, or potentially lobbying against, regulatory groups.
This, Webb explains, will be one of the biggest tasks facing the group.
“If there was an already ideal regulatory environment then we’d see much more consensus in the world of Internet of Things,” he says. “The fact that we have many different solutions shows that, to some degree, people are looking at the problems caused by lack of spectrum and coming up with different ways around it.
“Exactly what those are going to be we don’t know yet, because we don’t know what the Forum is going to select in terms of preferred standards. But I think you can probably look at the fact that there isn’t really any harmonised global band for the use of IoT.”
However, this isn’t the only stumbling block awaiting Webb and his consortium.
“We’ll have plenty of challenges, including just getting consensus around the requirements, the connectivity and therefore the standards to pursue,” he says.
Still, Webb says he believes those joining the forum are doing so in the knowledge that, without widely agreed-upon standards, their businesses ultimately won’t be able to rake in the bounties that IoT presents.
“Without consensus, the market just isn’t going to develop in a way that that is going to deliver against its promise,” he says. “Whilst this is never going to be easy, everyone is coming into the Forum understanding that that is its main purpose.”
Another task for Webb and his team will be to cut through the noise created by the countless other forums, consortia and similar interest groups trying to be heard in the M2M/ IoT space.
Yet Webb remains adamant that Wireless IoT is different to those that have come before. “We’re not a standards body. We’re here to drive consensus. We have to make sure we’re very clear about that, because there are just so many entities in the IoT space, and that’s part of the problem.”