A hardware company for detecting water leaks that started selling services, LeakSafe, an Icelandic company that monitors the pharmaceutical logistics chain, Controlant, and a space 5G company, AST SpaceMobile, are some examples of businesses that emerged or reinvented themselves due to hyperconnectivity.
“Smaller businesses have even more to gain from IoT than larger ones,” said Phil Skipper, who leads Vodafone’s Internet of Things strategy, during his presentation at the Vodafone Business Conference. The person in charge spoke not only of specific cases but also of the widespread transformation in several sectors, at a time when Vodafone connects 223 million devices around the world.
“It is possible to apply IoT almost everywhere”, he stated, speaking of applications in cars, with telematics and connected cockpits, in healthcare, with remote monitoring, for example, of sleep apnea, or in logistics, with connected containers.
“All these businesses have been digitized around IoT”, he stressed, noting that digitization can mean different things for each organization and be done for different reasons.
“My advice is, when you start your hyperconnected journey, when you think about digitizing around IoT, draw a roadmap and stick to it”, pointed out the expert.
Economy of Things
As devices become smarter, they will be able to transact with each other without human intervention. This is what Vodafone calls the Economy of Things and will include microtransactions between objects as varied as parking garages, traffic lights and bus stops.
“We will see systems becoming ecosystems,” said Phil Skipper. But the official warned that this will require additional guarantees. “If we connect everything we have to be 100% sure that this device, this network and this system are secure”, he warned.
This will be even more important as we enter the era of quantum computing, which is getting closer and closer. Skipper predicted it for 2028 and 2029 and said that Vodafone is preparing its equipment for that.
Photo: Mário Vasa