We see almost daily announcements of new M2M projects and collaborations in the areas of industrial automation, logistics, Smart Grid, Smart Cities, health, defense etc. and Service Providers are keen to play an integral role in these projects – not just providing the connectivity portion but playing a larger role as orchestrator of the entire (or significant portions of the) delivery ecosystem.
While there are already numerous successful M2M deployments and trials underway, there remain several known challenges in delivering more complex solutions.
Would you trust a healthcare application if your privacy was not guaranteed? Would you use a financial transaction solution if you had concerns about data security? Can you imagine paying for a monitoring service for your aging father if data collection was sporadic or inaccurate? Would you put your children in a driverless car if there weren’t some guarantees about their safety? It’s inconceivable that a patient would willingly undergo remote video-enabled surgery unless they had confidence that the network connectivity would not fail mid-operation.
End to end guarantees on a small number of characteristics – including quality of service assurance, latency, security and privacy – are absolutely critical for the successful deployment of the M2M and IoT applications which will truly make a difference to our lives.
Communications service providers are uniquely positioned to manage these critical characteristics, and in doing so can potentially unlock revenue not only for themselves but for an ecosystem of partners.
Managing these characteristics is neither straightforward nor cost-effective on an application-by-application or customer-by-customer basis today. But the move towards virtualised networks – including ultimately even the radio elements in 5G – makes this a very real business opportunity.
One of the interesting things which virtualisation enables is the ability to configure an entirely separate network for any given business application. This network slicing approach allows an entire network to be delivered as a pre-integrated dedicated entity, allowing independent network management and configuration for the unique needs of the specific business requirement.
A network slice template can be created which is optimised to support certain business scenarios, and then a network slice conforming to this template can be sold as an enabler for all kinds of applications. Critically, thanks to virtualization, the network slice can be rapidly deployed through automated interaction with orchestration systems, and it is predicted to be cost-effective to scale up or down in an easier and more cost effective manner than current physical network options.
The smart meter market is estimated to grow from an expected US$11.1 billion in 2014 to $18.2 billion by 2019 at a CAGR of 10.2% (www.marketsandmarkets.com). A service provider could design a network slice template which is optimised to support signaling-intensive behaviours such as in typical machine-to-machine terminals. Using this network slice template they can enable the rapid creation and deployment of a variety of smart-metering solutions across a variety of industry verticals including smart home, connected car etc.
Another network slice template could be designed to offer heightened data security, privacy and quality of service characteristics. A variety of home healthcare applications (a market predicted to grow to £355 billion by 2020 – Grand View Research 2014) such as remote patient monitoring, long term support of chronic conditions or effective drug utilisation and monitoring are prime candidates for these network and application characteristics.
By building a library of network slice templates, the service provider has the key to unlock the value of emerging M2M applications and enable the emergence of market opportunities which can’t be satisfied using today’s technologies.
In the Huawei Service Provider Operations Lab we have successfully prototyped a system which allows the creation of “template” network slices where the core network is optimised to support certain business scenarios. We welcome any service provider who would like to see this demonstration in action!
By Aileen Hurley Smith, head of Ecosystem Development, Huawei Service Provider Operations Lab.
