ABSTRACTING CONNECTIVITY FOR IOT WITH A BACKHAUL OPERATOR

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ABSTRACTING CONNECTIVITY FOR IOT WITH A BACKHAUL OPERATOR NIGEL CHADWICK VIDEO TRANSCRIPT Welcome! What s your name and what do you do? Hi, it s Nigel Chadwick.

1 ABSTRACTING CONNECTIVITY FOR IOT WITH A BACKHAUL OPERATOR NIGEL CHADWICK VIDEO TRANSCRIPT Welcome! What s your name and what do you do? Hi, it s Nigel Chadwick. I m one of the founders of Stream Technologies. Stream Technologies provide wireless network connectivity so that means that we provide connectivity to a cellular, increasing the satellite and shortly low-power radio network services as well on one single management platform to enterprise companies. Explain the low-power in a little bit more detail. You got low-power radio network, there s a number of alternative networks now star ting to make progress in the world. Effectively, it s on a mesh over localised basis so you can connect many, many sensors, which generally have low battery draw so they can stay out in the field for long periods of time, generally small amounts of data is something on, is it off, is it working, is there trouble that needs to be addressed. Small bits of data back and forth to probably a gateway and from that gateway, the whole amount of data off the sensors can then be backhauled over 3G or 4G LTE or even satellite where there s no cellular connectivity. What Streams is doing on this management platform is it has effectively given true visibility right through from the sensor all the way through the low -power radio network and out through the backhaul. There s an overview here of the data path whether the data has been transmitted across all the different elements of the data path. We re enabling data to be transferred resiliently and securely in a way that can be usually managed irrespective of the wireless type of connectivity. From the backhaul, are there many options in terms of connectivity? The backhaul increasingly so you ve got to date predominantly 3G is moving into 4G in the UK and now LTE over here but I think over the next two years we re going t o see more and more backhaul infrastructure based on satellite. The satellite operators have been working in SCADA so a kind of point to point solutions for many years now and it goes back to the 80s and 90s, it s a lot of more recent M2M technologies. But I think moving forward they are making a lot of noise about wanting to take a bigger slice of machine-to-machine Internet of Things that therefore means they re going to have to compete directly with cellular operators, which means that they re going to have to bring that form factor, the pricing down, the capex and the operating costs of transmitting data. I think that will happen, we ve seen it in the cellular world happen since around the year I think we ll start to see it in the satellite world as they start to look at how they can use various additional capacities that are actually carrying on a quite number of satellites. That s what I was going to ask you. I mean price is one thing and form factors another thing. What about bandwidth? Do they have the bandwidth required? IOT-INC. 1 AUGUST 17, 2016

2 Yeah, they re certainly planning to have, some of them are putting up new satellites, others will as soon as they can get the launch slots. There s a bit of an issue over gas to be able to get the satellites for the moment. But yeah, there s a whole schedule of new satellites planned to be launched over the next year or two. We see the satellite play starting to come into effect probably from around May 2015 onwards because I think by then they ll start to have some of the extra satellite so in particular the form factor, the satellite equipment and the tracking devices that are being based on the tracking of the satellite technologies will come down in form factor to a size that s ac ceptable and to a cost that is wearable as well. If we go back to 4G or 3G, you piggyback on top of the existing mobile network, is that right? Yeah, think of it perhaps as an overlay integrated into all the mobile networks so it doesn t matter which mobile network we re talking about, it doesn t matter whether around the world. We can integrate through a very light technical touch, that s through APIs, which means that we re very easy to deal with, very quick to integrate and we can on-board the mobile network operators. We have done something like 15 now across the world and there s probably another 15 to 20 lined up for the next year to come on board, which starts to build that 5:00 international network of mobile operators but through one single management platform so that an enterprise customer doesn t have to deal individually, contractually pricing or with the vagaries of different management platforms that the different operators tend to use across the world. I m thinking even more than that I want your opinion on this because I just recently started seeing specific M2M or IoT mobile networks being launched. Is that just branding? Is that just marketing? They re saying that there are some characteristics that are different rather than using a voice network or a data network; you know what I m referring to? I know what you re referring to. This has been touted I think it s well through small scale and localized at the moment. This private Internet of Things is a very valid point and I always say to people the devil is in the detail. You got to look closely at what they re actually selling in terms the actual management platform itself, the backhaul infrastructure. There s a whole multitude of technologies around just the backhaul infrastructure itself that you can start to talk about. You ve really got to look and search to find a truly unique company s offering the high levels of resilience and security. So is that what you re referring to when you say the backhaul and technologies? Maybe expand a little bit on that? For example, if I talk about Streams on backhaul infrastructure, it s been uniquely designed so everything off mast runs across our own uniquely designed backhaul infrastructure. We have an N+1 architecture, which actually means that we can lose two-thirds of the backhaul infrastructure and it still runs at % of time. There s packet loss mitigation technology that we actually integrate into the infrastructure. These kinds of design propositions in fact that we maintain this high qua lity at our cost, we choose to provide high quality means that the end customer has a much high level of resilience and security and ease of management of the entire on -mast/off-mast infrastructure. IOT-INC. 2 AUGUST 17, 2016

3 Explain in a little bit more detail for me. You have an overlay network over say Rogers, and then what is your infrastructure? You ve got the gateway, that s going to make the backhaul connection but you re referring to other infrastructure. What other infrastructure are you referring to? Data comes off-mast, the mast are on by the operator networks but then it moves off -mast and everything moves through or is transited through the stream private APN, which effectively comprises three data centers all with mobile service, enterprise -grade, London, Manchester. There s a huge amount to redundancy built into the pathways of the backhaul infrastructure. Plus it will dynamically assign IP addresses so it won t be just one single IP address, it will dynamically assign multiply IP addresses, which means that in essence has a much better chance of connecting if part of the infrastructure goes down. The networks themselves, what s called lossy networks, the loose packets of information which means that they re inefficient and have a result of a slowness and inefficiency as a result of that. So by putting in packet loss mitigation technology along with all these other technolgoies, they all start to add up to much more resilient and speedy network. So within your overlay network, you re saying? Yeah, on the off-mast infrastructure. When I refer to our own network has been an overlay network, I m more referring to the actual management platform as an overlaying kind of layer. The management platform through the APIs can connect into multiple different carriers or indeed they can actually connect into multiple different platforms themselves the Jaspers, the Ericssons, the wireless of this world. Our management platform can connect into all these through a simple API integration. The end customers can then just use the single management platform layer. 10:00 I want to understand that a little bit better. Talk about the management platform. Is this an API that connects to another API or is it different? What is the management platform? The management platform does integrate through APIs. If you take a single operator then some other platforms connect into it HLL level. Streams Technology, we can do HLL level, we have the technical competency to do that but from our perspective it s probably not the most technical eloquent solution. So we ll use APIs, it s less disruptive. What that means is that we have a very basic and connectivity capability with the network operator but all of the functionality on our platform is in a virtual state so it all sets off net and included in that is all the monitoring equipment with the data transit so thresholds, minimums, maximums, it can provide alerts. We ve got counting boxes, what that means is it actually counts the data off net and by that we ve got algorithms that calculate data usage thereby we can provide pre-pay solution, which doesn t necessarily then have to rely upon the raw data records that are coming back from the network operator because in many instances there might be a delay. For example in roaming solutions there s often a del ay in that type of data being provided. We use that as a double check obviously over the course of time but in terms of providing real-time analytics and monitoring on network up to the actual data and the connectivity, that s all done via the management platform. It s quite a unique solution and the world is just kind of getting to know about it now because this week we ve just kind of released the IoT -X connect platform. IOT-INC. 3 AUGUST 17, 2016

4 So I guess there s a direct relationship between this measurement and billing? Is thi s a feature of the platform as well? Yeah, since 2005 up until which time we were using third-party billing systems, which hadn t been designed for machine-to-machine and being born from wide legacy kind of billing systems. We took the decision to build our own billing algorithms. And of course from machine-to-machine you re talking in many instances lots of connects, small amounts of data. It s very, very different; it s almost an inverse kind of billing algorithm, billing model to consumers and corporates not a bill from day-today by mobile network operators worldwide. That produces lots of data records and then to build and manage all those data records takes quite a powerful set of algorithms and service in terms of being able to speed up the billing process and do all the monitoring around the billing. Yeah, we ve done our own billing since On the line of billing, let s get into business models. I m interested in two business models. 1. With this billing system and management system, what are your customers? What are the typical business models have your customers? 2. I like to understand your business model so for the viewers of this video, when they re looking for a connectivity platform, what do they have to think about? Business models from our customers, obviously there s always the price. With multiple network operators offering network connectivity, quite often customers will approach the different networks for the different models. There are big differences between the network models for exa mple in the UK, there s one network operator that will provide 3G but it s a fall -back 2G services. We always try and place the end customer onto the right network which means that we ve got the right tariff for that customer. Models are hugely valuable because at one end of the scale you ve got smart meters and insurance telematics which are small amounts of data frequently sent but they have to be very cheap connectivity solutions for the customers. And on the other end of the scale you ve got things like digital broadcasting, I think that s going to be big as we move towards 4G in Europe more and more. Whereby broadcasters can use cellular services to broadcast live 15:00 interviews, media events, that kind of thing rather than the legacy kind of transmission which is over speeding satellite, whereby you have to book an expensive satellite phone, you have to get it into schedule and it s expensive at time operating costs. As we move towards 4G, we re seeing new business models and new tariffs come into pl ay in terms of larger data sets being serviced. From our perspective, in terms of our own business model, we ll often do a wholesale agreement with the operators. That is more and more inclined to become what we call a bundle-based wholesale agreement. It will include certain amount of megabytes or gigabytes, depending on the actual wholesale tariff, which we will then re -rate and sell out on a retail basis to our end customers. In the same way, on a per byte basis or on a per activity basis? Usually in M2M IoT now, once they ve tested the devices in the field there s quite a consistency in the amount of data that s transmitted over device. So you know what the pro parameters are so you put IOT-INC. 4 AUGUST 17, 2016

5 them into a bundle that includes a little bit of extra head room j ust in case it overruns but generally will fit within that and if it doesn t, you can shift them onto a different pricing model. For groups of devices that might have a variability, for example some kind of alarm system, whereby pretty much is asleep just saying yes, I m working, tiny amounts of data until the alarm is triggered and this much higher data than in those very real situations. What we find in that, the end customer will more likely choose a pooled or an aggregated option. So within that there s a pool of data and there will be a drawdown basis across all the different devices. Again, this is typical of the challenges that the billing systems are facing so we ve evolved and created billing systems that take account to thos e different kinds of situations. IOT-INC. 5 AUGUST 17, 2016

BUYING DECISION CRITERIA WHEN DEVELOPING IOT SENSORS

BUYING DECISION CRITERIA WHEN DEVELOPING IOT SENSORS PHILIP POULIDIS VIDEO TRANSCRIPT What is your name and what do you do? My name is Philip Poulidis and I m the VP and General Manager of Mobile and Internet