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For more than 2 decades, mobile devices have been evolving technology around the world. Technology evolution has consistently grown from single profile (IMSI) sim cards to multi-IMSI sim cards. With this emergence, the footprint of the hardware has also reduced from 2FF to MFF2.
The figure above demonstrates, at a glance, the SIM card Gen’s for a better understanding of its footprints.
Because we are in an era where “needs” are being transformed, we are at a stage where everyone is connected with more than 10 end devices in day-to-day life. Thus, connectivity plays an important role where more than 20 billion devices are involved in global roaming as well as domestic deployments.
eUICC deploying practices help in easy provisioning and on-boarding new devices into the existing network. These deployments provide cost-effective connectivity including flexibility from the selection of operators to the profiles in mobile devices. These interoperable features enable startups as well as well-established manufacturers to make advancements in IoT deployments in different real-life use cases like manufacturing, roaming, pricing, platform providers, profile swapping, etc.
The eUICC (A.K.A. eSIM) technology is overall more reliable in for MNO’s (Mobile Network Operators) as well as IoT device manufacturers, and a proven evolution for the rising potentials of their products and strengthens the network connectivity.
From the user’s standpoint, eSim cards are longer-lasting as there is no chance of losing a sim card and far fewer chip demolishing faults. It saves time as there is no required visit to the store to buy or portability switching from one MNO to another. The process of portability becomes easier and quicker.
Provisioning: With the usage of eSim cards, the IoT devices come with built-in support of eSim thus IoT platforms enable the remote provisioning support in its network stack and therefore it becomes simpler and quicker for remote provisioning. This feature helps in communicating with the devices from anywhere in the world through simple steps of switching profiles on the mobile devices.
The amount of real estate required of traditional sim cards is now greatly reduced using minute chips embedding into the mobile devices. The complexities in replacing a sim card is also reduced and replaced by switching profiles directly; no hardware replacement is required. Thus, mechanical failures are reduced tremendously.
Because of these benefits, the OEM’s and MNO’s are embracing eSIM functionality and we are seeing a growing list of devices from wearables to meters to GPS devices utilizing eSIM. We expect to see this list only grow in the future.
eSIM technology enables the interoperability with respect to its profile switching feature or remote provisioning. Its remote accessibility to end devices in a secured, widespread network has decreased the number of challenges, but with these evolutions in the technology, some new-age challenges might become the barriers or the breakdown for the technology adoption.
With newly developed SIM Card technology, there are definitely some challenges to overcome.
The IoT ecosystem is rapidly expanding in its quantity of deployments and has many diversified domains. It is overloaded with data which is shared among billions of devices. Device manufacturers must increase the SIM hardware reliability since the minute chip is, for all practical purposes, impossible to remove, while playing a critical role in network connectivity.
Although in theory with eSIM sounds like it would be simple to switch MNO’s as mentioned above, there are a series of steps that are required for this to happen, and some MNO’s are resisting eSIM. As an example of this resistance, there was a widely reported investigation by the Department of Justice in the USA that looked into possible collusion between the 2 largest carriers AT&T and Verizon and their resistance to eSIM tech in the consumer handset space. Therefore, there are complications when it comes to the practical vs. the theoretical benefits of switching providers.
Another impediment to eSIM adoption is the cost and availability of devices using this standard. While the eSIM itself is more reliable than a standard SIM, the cost per SIM is still slightly more expensive than the traditional SIM. In a very cost-conscience environment, this difference may be too severe to justify adoption. The selection of devices available with eSIM is also not as robust as those which rely on traditional SIM form factors. One solution we are seeing some OEMs move forward with is a hybrid IoT device with both traditional SIM and eSIM availability
Finally, Technology Consortiums must standardize the formats and technological implementations for bringing this technology forward and getting IoT OEM’s, and MNO’s on the same page.
OneSimCard M2M works with many leading GPS and Telematics providers all over the world. Our international mobile cellular connectivity solutions enable fleet software and hardware solutions companies quickly scale by providing a single portal, a single APN for all of their devices, and multi-IMSI SIM cards, including eUICC capability, with access to multiple networks in most countries. If you are curious about our solution and would like to learn more, please contact us at sales@onesimcard.com or call us at +1 617-313-8888.
The fleet industry is currently undergoing significant changes that will change the future of fleet management — creating new ways to maximize efficiency and minimize the costs that are involved in fleet operations.
To keep up with the competition, it is imperative that company-owned fleets run on the latest software and follow the latest trends in the industry. Organizations should also keep an eye out for the upcoming changes and find out ways to better adapt to them.
Here, we will look at the top 5 trends in fleet management to understand what precisely has been driving the fleet management industry.
In the past few years, fleet management has actively used data to understand and scale their operations, & this is something to which companies far and wide have been quickly adapting.
New Fleet Management Software and Hardware companies are being founded every year that offer information-gathering as their core solution. They help the fleet industry verify trends and make data-driven decisions. This streamlined process of data collecting reduced paper-work enables operational team members to easily access and share information among themselves and other internal and/or external stakeholders.
With data at hand, the fleet industry operates much proactively and works effectively towards reducing vehicle downtime and virtually eliminating unexpected issues.
Tracking and telematics are two of the primary areas of focus of fleets. The driver’s behavior can be analyzed well with vehicle tracking and telematics, and reading the odometer helps with managing parts inventory and maintenance schedules.
These GPS units can be placed in vehicles (either hard-installed or removable) and transfer data to the head office — all in real-time. This way, fleet managers can make informed decisions to manage drivers and vehicles more efficiently.
GPS tracking and telematics can help with simple things, such as finding out whether your driver is wearing a seatbelt or not, or if there is any unauthorized person inside the vehicle. The whole system becomes much easier to integrate into a fleet’s existing backend dispatch system using APIs. Once the integration takes place, you can get real-time data on location, ETA, and a whole host of information depending on the problem you need to solve.
It also provides accurate, real-time data that can help you prevent truck breakdowns. You can find out the vehicle’s speed, odometer readings, how long the engine has been running, and more. ROI can be easily realized using tracking and telematics systems.
One of the most expensive elements of the fleet industry is the acquisition of new vehicles. These come up as high one-time costs which must be incurred if the company needs up-to-date performance and metrics from their vehicles.
Truck costs have also gone up in recent years with increasing demand, which has put more focus on an updated fleet that displaces older, outdated vehicles.
According to Ernst and Young, the cost of fleet management may account for 30 to 50 percent of the overall cost of fleet ownership.
The challenging aspect here is the cost of incalculable components, along with labor expenses. To tackle this problem, fleet managers need to depend on software, which can help to decrease work pressure.
Some programs can even provide automatic updates around fleet operations and automate the billing process.
Another factor that plays a crucial role in fleet management is the cost of fuel. Oil prices have significantly dropped in the past few years, and it has had a positive effect on organizations’ revenue.
Newer vehicles are more dependent on electrical components, which significantly reduces the consumption of oil and the costs related to it. However, at the peak of the driving season, fleet managers must be well aware of how the fuel expenses will be affecting their revenue. Thus, it becomes crucial that the fleet has tools that compute fuel utilization, so there’s a record of everything.
One cannot stray away from the fact that the fleet industry will keep on developing, and so will the competition around it. To stay ahead of the game, it is a must that fleet managers adopt fleet management applications. These applications unlock the potential of the entire fleet management process and immediately deliver results that can improve the company’s efficiency and reduce operational expenses in both the short and long term.
OneSimCard M2M works with many leading GPS and Telematics providers all over the world. Our international mobile cellular connectivity solutions enable fleet software and hardware solutions companies quickly scale by providing a single portal, a single APN for all of their devices, and multi-IMSI SIM cards, including eUICC capability, with access to multiple networks in most countries. If you are curious about our solution and would like to learn more, please contact us at sales@onesimcard.com or call us at +1 617-313-8888.
A 2017 survey conducted by Cisco, engaging with 1,845 business IoT leaders, showed that 60% of IoT initiatives never passed the Proof-of-Concept (PoC) stage(1). This correlates with the findings of the consulting firm Capgemini’s Digital Transformation Institute, highlighting that – on average – only 36% of the companies deployed IoT solutions at full scale(2).
This is a pretty low success rate, which raised the question: why are these initiatives stalling instead of scaling? What leads a decision-maker to halt and completely stop an innovative project?
Technology capabilities? IoT maturity? Lack of standardization? These are surely wrong answers. CEO’s and board members, tech-savvies or not, have a primary duty to protect and preserve the interests of the shareholders – which equates to maximizing the value of the entity of which they are in charge(3)(4).
Simply put, the decision makers care less about the latest technology breakthroughs or an extensive list of product features than they care about their bottom-line. As such, PoC is a major disservice for both seller and buyer, as it inherently fails to demonstrate the value generated by the IoT project, to focus on proving the technology works.
There is a need to change the paradigm.
As Deloitte’s Chief IoT Technologist Robert Schmid explained at LiveWorx19(5), one must kill proof-of-concept and replace it by a proof-of-value (PoV). The latter shall explicitly articulate value (especially the dollar value – most tangible return among all), mostly using common indicators such as Return on Investment (ROI) or Net Present Value (NVP).
This is not to say that technology aspect and its challenges have to be neglected, but this should come in the discussion at a later stage, as one (or several) item during the risks assessment review. This discussion will even be easier to have if the customer is sold on the value the project brings, and you can demonstrate maturity and expertise in this space (backed up by previous successes, possessing strong know-how or engaging with an expert IoT partner).
To successfully sell an IoT project at scale – as any complex B2B Digital sale (ERP, CRM, desktop virtualization, etc.), one must adopt a value-based approach, not a transactional-based. As stated in many complex solution sales analysis, push of pre-packaged bundles of existing products and services is an increasingly losing proposition in a competitive environment with a cost-down approach.(6)
“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” – Warren Buffet
If price is immediately clear to anyone, value (and outcomes) remains hard to comprehend, so once the PoC is done and comes the time to decide whether or not to roll-out at scale, it is impossible for executives to justify a (high) price in the absence of clear understanding of the value.
Similarly, arguing that you have the best product or solutions based on XYZ features to solve a problem is pointless if you haven’t demonstrated that this is a problem your prospect is really facing and that it is worth solving.
Listening to your prospect and understanding what are their pain points and how it impacts the company is the first step to quantify value. What are the benefits of solving a problem should always come first in your analysis – prior to how to solve the problem. Don’t confuse your discovery phase with solutioning.
At a high level, benefits can always be sorted into two categories:
The second category is often disregarded by C-levels, as they prefer the certainty of the first. For instance, capturing more market share due to better customer service (increase revenue) cannot be as easily quantified (at least not without extrapolations and market surveys) as a net reduction of your freight expenditure (decrease of costs).
Once the benefits quantification is reviewed and acknowledged by your customer, demonstrating the theoretical worth of the project, you now have a solid basis to continue building your business case and move to the second step of value quantification: establish how to solve the pain point and establish the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of the solution. More often than not, you don’t need to be accurate to the penny, as several unknowns might remain – nonetheless, IoT is no different than other complex projects (for instance, TCO calculation for cloud deployment is widely understood now(7)(8)) and, for a given industry, recurring patterns (e.g cost centers) are emerging, enabling organizations to be able to calculate TCO repetitively.
With the quantified benefits and the estimated TCO, it is now possible to start evaluating whether or not the IoT initiative should be considered. Not only this approach does benefit the customer, but also the solution provider – as nobody wants to invest resources and time in a project that will never scale due to lack of economic viability. This first high-level analysis provides a clear and timely “GO/NOGO” gate, does not require lengthy in-field technical evaluation, can be done repeatedly with different prospects or on different problematics (provided that you possess the adequate expertise) and in-time will reinsure all stakeholders to move forward.
In our next article “Find Value in IoT – Part 2”, we will discuss how to validate theoretical value quantification (both benefits and TCO).
At OneSimCard M2M, we are constantly thinking about Value and how we can improve the value of services to our customers. This can take the form of offering 24/7 Tech support for life, outstanding levels of Customer Support, a team of
References:
(1) – The Journey to IoT Value: Challenges, Breakthroughs, and Best Practices – May 2017, by Cisco
(2) – Unlocking the business value of IoT in operations – October 2017, by Capgemini
(3) – Definition of Chief Executive Office, Wikipedia
(4) – Financial Definition of Chief Executive Office, by Merriam-Webster
(7) – Cloud Economics: Making the Business Case for Cloud, 2014, KPMG
Wireless Connectivity – History and Trends
Most of us remember the time when we had to wait for an annoyingly long time for data to load over our internet connections. Even simple text would sometimes take a minute to load, because we only had dial-up wired/cable internet. However, technology and speed changed at a rapid pace. Now, we have high-speed internet running on our cell-phones 24 hours a day. So, let’s cherish this growth by discussing how we got there and what are the latest trends in the industry and IoT.
Wireless Connectivity:
Most of the wireless networks today use radio communication to connect two or more nodes (devices) together. This includes Cellular Networks, WIFI Networks, Satellites, Bluetooth and more. Wireless connectivity is the design and installation of devices that will be transmitting and receiving signals for much of M2M (Machine to Machine) connectivity.
The new Trends:
With the evolution of technology, wireless connectivity is gaining popularity day by day. A big chunk of the networking is now wireless. Our cellular systems started with1G and now 5G is beginning to be deployed. At this time most of the cellular companies are offering 2G, 3G and 4G technologies.
2G (second generation):
Launched by the Finish company Radiolinja, now Elisa, in 1991, it was the first time that digital encryption of our phone conversations became possible. Also, it offered SMS and MMS technologies that were not present in the earlier generation.
Due to its high efficiency, 2G allowed greater mobile phone penetration (number of sim cards/ phone numbers)
2G originally had a speed of 128 Kbps. Later, it was updated to 2.5G at 256 Kbps. 2G is still being widely used around the world.
3G (third generation):
3rd generation networks emerged in 1998. It brought along faster transmitting speeds that allowed internet access and video calling features.
At this time we also started to see the adoption of IoT solutions like GPS tracking on 2G and 3G networks.
With the max speed of 3Mbps for non-moving and 384 kbps for moving devices, 3G was the first to introduce the term “mobile broadband”. Some later version of 3G could provide the speed up to 10 MBps for download and 5 Mbps upload. 3G provided “all-in a mobile environment” by allowing Internet access, voice and video calling features and streaming content on mobile devices.
All cellular networks are also better in terms of the security they offer. The UE (user equipment) ensures that the network connections are validated and verified before establishing a connection.
4G-LTE (fourth generation):
4G networks are also called Long Term Evolution (LTE); it is a single platform for many wireless networks. Released in 2008, 4G networks support internet access and high-quality video and live streaming.
The maximum speed of a 4G/LTE network is 150Mbps. And if the user is moving then the speed could be as high as 100 Mbps. Globally today, 3G and 4G technologies are most widely used technologies.
LTE provides the ultimate internet experience with IP packet delay being less than 5 milliseconds somewhat similar to wired broadband internet.
LTE was introduced with the purpose of increasing the capacity and speed of wireless networks.
LTE CAT M1
LTE CAT M1 is the standard developed specifically for M2M, IOT applications. This standard uses only small part of LTE channel bandwidth -1 MB and as such allows better utilization of it. CAT M1 also allows for a lower power consumption of the devices. LTE CAT M1 can be used for the tracking of moving devices or assets as the latency of the mode is still low. The devices using LTE CAT M1 standard generally offers lower manufacturing cost due to lower module costs. LTE CAT M1 will be the most widely used standard in IOT for the tracking of moving assets.
NB-IoT:
Like LTE-CAT M1, this standard was also developed by 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project). NarrowBand-Internet of Things uses LPWA (low power wide area) technology. It improves the spectrum of services and devices, especially focusing on indoor and deep coverage, and improved battery life of devices. NB-IOT uses even less bandwidth than LTE CAT M1 – only 100 KHz and as such can transmit data at very low speed of 250 Kbits per second. The latency (delay) can be as large as 10 seconds and because of it, this mode is not recommended to be used with the tracking of moving objects.
Because Narrow Bank IoT technologies- NB-IoT and LTE CAT M1 -IoT are able to conserve battery life by utilizing a small, highly efficient segment of bandwidth, the device battery life can be increased up to 10 years. The increase in battery life enables developers much more flexibility to deploy devices in more and more remote locations and increases the ways M2/M/IoT is being used. There are a variety of use cases for NB from smart cars and bicycles to controlling appliances and smart meters.
Image Courtesy GSMA.com
Benefits of Narrow Band Technologies:
All IoT technologies consume low power when they are in operation. It was one of the goals of LTE CAT M1 and NB-IoT to save power consumption and improve the battery life of the devices connected to it.
The components required for NB are less expensive, in comparison to just LTE chipsets, IoT chipsets are uniformly priced and cost effective as they are easy to manufacture. Processing a simpler waveform is also much simpler to create.
Narrow band devices use less bandwidth allowing the network to support many more devices at the same time. This is a critical factor as the growth in M2M/IoT is exploding with no signs of slowing. According to a McKinsey study, the number of connected devices by 2023 will grow to 43 Billion – 10 times the number of connected devices in 2018.
In addition due to the lower transmission speed, Narrow Band devices allow more penetration indoors or inside basements. It also offers a more secure connection. Moreover, the deployment is easy and due to its wide range, this technology has grown popularity.
NB-IoT vs LTE CAM M1:
The hardware and Software both are made use of in the NB-IoT so it is not possible to take a middle route and use NB-IoT with a combination of other technologies. However, there are a few chips that allow this but are relatively expensive. So if you decide to deploy NB-IoT, you’ll have to rely on it completely.
Assets in motion don’t work as well with devices other than the ones that are fixed at a point. An asset using NB-IoT that isn’t stationary does not behave well and can only be improved by installing more towers.
There are very few NB-IOT networks yet:
Roaming across networks is also an enormous challenge and some device manufacturers are making NB-IoT devices that usually do not fall back to 4G and thus will not be able to work outside of the country.
LTE CAT M1:
Finally, these technologies are constantly improving and we see new releases every few years. These developments are beneficial in M2M wireless communication.
Further work is being carried out to improve wireless connectivity with the development of 5G technology. It is expected to be released more wide-spread in 2020.
We are glad to announce that the Beta version of a new SIM account interface is now available.
You can go back to the previous
