The future of IoT connectivity: How eSIM is reshaping the landscape

In this episode of the Trending Tech Podcast, Matt Hatton, co-founder of Transforma Insights, is joined by Sam Colley, Head of Connectivity Strategy at G&D. Together, they explore the evolution of IoT connectivity, focusing on the game-changing role of eSIM technology. They discuss the challenges and potential of remote SIM provisioning, the impact of the new SGP.32 standard, and how enterprises can leverage these advancements for more efficient and secure IoT deployments. Tune in to learn how eSIM is transforming industries from automotive to utilities and what the future holds for global IoT connectivity.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Welcome
• 1:14 Technology News Highlights
• 4:12 Discussion on IoT Security
• 6:36 Research on Voice Services for IoT
• 8:38 Introduction to G&D and eSIM Technology
• 10:27 Clarifying eSIM Terminology
• 12:06 Status and Evolution of eSIM Standards
• 19:18 Enterprise Adoption and Vertical Sectors
• 21:00 Challenges and Future of eSIM
• 25:00 SGP.32: A Game Changer for IoT Connectivity
• 30:00 Closing Remarks

Transcript

[00:00:00] Matt Hatton: Hi and Welcome to episode 43 of the Trending Tech Podcast brought to you by the team at IoT-Now.com, and VanillaPlus.com. For this episode of the podcast, I'm joined by Sam Colley, who's the head of connectivity strategy at G&D. But first, a warm welcome to all of you around the world who are listening in.

In a change to your usual host, I am Matt Hatton, but to keep things nice and simple, as with Jim Morrish, your usual host, I'm also co-founder of Transforma Insights, a firm of industry analysts focused on all things related to IoT, AI, and digital transformation. Today, the topic is The Evolution of IoT connectivity, how eSIM is shaping its future.

And that's a fortunate topic for me as it's a particularly big focus area for my research. We recently published extensive research on eSIM, particularly looking at the new SGP.32 standard, and back in July, I unveiled our annual communications service provider benchmarking report, which looks at all of the key trends related to cellular IoT connectivity so all these things are very much front of mind to me. But Sam, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you as a guest.

[00:01:12] Sam Colley: Thanks for having me, Matt. Nice to be here.

[00:01:14] Matt Hatton: Excellent. Before we start that discussion on eSIM and how it's changing IoT connectivity, let's take a quick look at some serious technology news stories that Sam and I have spotted this week. Sam, I'll let you go first. What have you seen that's interesting? 

[00:01:30] Sam Colley: I've noticed an article. Basically, it was released by Panasonic and it was interesting talking about it security, which I know is, a huge topic and one that comes up all the time. But I think it was interesting because it was giving some dire warnings about the current state, really, of security in hardware devices.

And really what that means for the market, particularly as we see the attack cycles get shorter and malware becoming more advanced. And really, they were talking about the need for this kind of continuous protection approach within hardware and beyond.

But They were specifically focusing on hardware and how, these devices need to be able to evolve once they leave the factory, because you can protect something today, but tomorrow it's vulnerable again. And I think, for me, it resonated because, we see this all the time.

There's a lot of talk about security, but this kind of who's taking the burden of the security evolution on the cost essentially, and that's always been a challenge in terms of combating that, but what. Panasonic is suggesting or what they're going to do is they're going to proactively create lots of honey pots around the world and encourage these attacks so they can actively learn and then a positive spin on the article. So it wasn't all doom and gloom was that they will then share this information more broadly in the IoT ecosystem to try and combat this growing threat, which, for all of IoT's potential, you know the security question mark is still something that kind of looms over its head a little bit.

So, yeah, that was something that, that I found particularly interesting this week.

[00:02:56] Matt Hatton: Yeah, it's clearly always been one of the critical issues and one of the things that perhaps has held IoT back a little bit. And we've seen the load of regulations come through, right? Last probably three or four years, a huge amount of regulation related to security. But I think that's necessary, but not sufficient is how I'd describe it.

There's big element of a chain's only as strong as its weakest link. And there's a lot of different links within the IoT space and that kind of idea of sharing all of these best practices and sharing what the challenges are around security. I think actually, maybe that makes sense.

[00:03:32] Sam Colley: I think a lot of sense, actually, I think one of the good examples of where maybe something doesn't quite go far enough is the recent FCC, announcements where, they're creating a, I guess, a watermark or a label that you can achieve for your hardware, if it adheres to certain criteria.

You know, that's a perfect example of really where you're not addressing all of the different threat planes within the IoT ecosystem and you can have the safest device technically in the world. Right. But if you've got an exposed cloud infrastructure, then, you're still not necessarily securing the application end to end.

So, that engagement and the collaboration that you mentioned, I think, is going to be really fundamental moving forward in order to combat this growing threat. 

[00:04:12] Matt Hatton: Yeah question of end to end is probably the important one because there's always a question of who's responsible. And the answer is everybody's responsible. But then everybody's responsible, maybe no one's responsible. It's a challenging thing. Anyhow, all good stuff. Let's move on to my serious news story for the day, and for us, it's in fact, one of our own little plug for some research that we published as part of a free white paper that we released this week. That's looking at the need for supporting voiced services for IoT. As part of that research, we found that almost 20% of cellular IoT connections and 22% of connectivity revenue, which amounts to 80 billion dollars, have a requirement for supporting voice and the most important of those would be connected car, but there's also numerous other use cases around worker safety and vertical transportation, assisted living and so on. And in many cases, there's a regulatory driver for supporting, for instance, emergency calling for recall. And there's a lot of options for delivering voice and in fact, really even describing it as voice in its own is perhaps not entirely accurate. There are many forms of voice, whether it's pushed at talk or emergency notifications or to wait concierge support or whatever. But historically on cellular connections, you'd use fallback to 2G, 3G.

But with the sun setting of. 2G and 3G networks, that's not really a viable approach. And so that leaves a couple of options. You can either go with a native IP based voice in the form of voiceover LTE or voiceover new radio when we get to 5G or you go with some sort of over the top voice service, like a WhatsApp, but I mean, obviously not, but, similar to that kind of approach.

Now, what the most appropriate will be depends on the use case. But conclusion was, most of the use cases actually have quite a significant requirement for security, compliance, reliability, flexibility, and a few other things, which mean that really it's going to focus on that circuit switch on the VoLTE VONR, form rather than the OTT, voice. So, voice, we don't tend to think of IoT as a voice thing, but lots of IoT applications demand voice. So that was our one. So I don't know whether you had any thoughts on that one. It's a little bit esoteric and very specific a piece of research that we did, but, if you do.

[00:06:36] Sam Colley: Yes, in terms of what we see from the market, I obviously, the majority of applications don't require it, but, there are still the applications that you mentioned that do. And we see mainly the demand coming for the VoLTE implementation as well, in terms of what's the least complex to implement, right?

I mean, if you're looking at an over the top type service, then often you're going to have to have an additional application on the hardware and often, the kind of lightweight devices that, have very low cost hardware, etc. Then there's often not a lot of space left for much to be put onto the device.

And we're seeing that and we'll talk about it later In with the new standards for SGP.32 as well in, in the eSIM world, as one of the potential drawbacks there, but yeah, so, I mean, the module manufacturers really, obviously if they can support the VoLTE on the modems, even down in the Cat-M kind of category of modem, then, you know, I think that should be readily available as long as the supporting networks can also support the VoLTE environment and maybe even in a roaming environment, which can also be a challenge.

So there's a few. Things that stand in the way, but I think technology is moving on and, the understanding of what's required is also becoming clearer. So, yeah, it's an interesting topic and one that kind of isn't always coming up. But when it does, it's usually for, interesting opportunities or applications like you mentioned.

[00:07:49] Matt Hatton: Yeah, that's kind of what we thought. It's an area that's not really looked at a huge amount, but it sounds like we're pleasantly in alignment and that's a good thing. Okay, onto our main discussion. The evolution of IoT connectivity, how eSIM is shaping its future, as I mentioned in the intro. It's this area around eSIM is certainly one that we've, been dealt don't mean to in in quite a lot of detail and the impact that it will have on connectivity. But we're not here to talk to me. We're here to talk to you, Sam. So, but just to kick off. Really, there's a bit of background.

A lot of people are going to be familiar with G&D manufacturer of SIMs, Bank cards and bank notes, even, but can you give us a little overview of what the company does as a global connectivity provider and particularly related to eSIM?

[00:08:38] Sam Colley: Yes, I was gonna give you just a two line introduction to G+D as a whole because I think it is relevant to some of the other conversation topics as well. Because G+D basically obviously goes way beyond just connectivity, eSIM and, and SIM cards and it's been securing the data transactions of individuals, throughout its business basically since its inception.

You know, whether that was banknotes to start with and security there or beyond, but it defines itself as a security tech company and basically across all its divisions, it deploys these kind of security solutions. And really, I think of it as like protecting your pocket, right? So all of them are like personal data security solutions.

And, it was then the first obviously company in the world to develop the eSIM card and so they just have a long history of protecting personal data. In terms of the connectivity and eSIM G+D proposition is somewhat unique. We're the only company really that globally can offer a fully integrated and owned connectivity eSIM - SIM stack from top to bottom. So, all the way down into the operating system on the SIM, all the way through to the core network. You know, we own that stack in its entirety and therefore that really allows us to add some pretty cool value added technology within that ecosystem, really empowering enterprises to connect their devices faster, more affordably and more securely, hopefully moving forward.

So, yeah, as I say, I think it's quite unique position to be in.

[00:09:51] Matt Hatton: Yeah, that's the kind of overview picture that's drilling a little bit. I said we were going to talk about eSIM, but a lot of the background on eSIM is really rooted in the change from the physical plastic SIM to the embedded soldered SIM. And actually, there's even a little bit of confusion around terminology, right?

What do people mean by eSIM? I tend to use the term embedded SIM because For me is a physical element. Whereas when people talk about eSIM, very often they're referring not to the physical thing itself, but to the functionality associated with it. So can you talk me through that a little bit?

[00:10:27] Sam Colley: Yeah, I think it is definitely thrown around, and therefore creates some confusion. But I think it's also important to state that eSIM technology itself isn't limited to embedded hardware, right? And it can be deployed on any UI, UICC that has eSIM technology enabled or an OS on it that supports it so if you aren't ready for an embedded chip. And this is one of the confusions we have, I think, in the market with eSIM adoption is people think they need to have like an embedded chip in their manufacturing process. They don't. And so, that doesn't stop you from adopting the technology and obviously regular form factor the SIMs are available.

As you said, there's the terminology. So when I refer to eSIM now, I think I refer to the technology, not the embedded chSip. And if I'm referring to an embedded chip, I'll say embedded SIM. Because otherwise, yeah, there is a lot of confusion. The change, really, driven by, well, one, there's a big kind of ESG element to it, I think, so there's like the environmental cost of SIM card and then the eSIM piece, but I think mainly it's to really try and avoid this kind of fear of vendor lock in, and basically having to replace devices or replace SIMs in the field, which we know can cost a huge amount, and so this ability to update it OTA, in the field at any given time, is really attractive to a lot of people, whether or not we've really achieved that to date within the eSIM environment. That flexibility that it promised is a whole other story. Uh, and we'll look at that probably later when we talk about some of the newer technologies, but really, yeah, I think it's just the attractiveness really is that remote provisioning piece, you reduce footprint in your hardware. Um, and you know, maybe with iSIM at some point, even no footprint in your hardware, which is another step towards, the evolution of eSIM in general.

[00:12:06] Matt Hatton: Yeah, One of the issues is that this is all actually relatively new, right? The, capability to do remote SIM provisioning, the availability of the, soldered SIM form factors. [MH1] We're still working our way through this as a space, right? It's still relatively new.

[00:12:23] Sam Colley: Yes, I think so. And I think, as I say that the move for everyone to use. Just purely an embedded chip, I still think is a long way away, and I think we need a lot more engagement from also the OEMs within the industry, right? Not just the end users of this to kind of deliver devices when they're bought off the shelf, but the parties, you know, already enabled with this technology.

And that's really what will drive adoption. Because if it's someone just, buying 10, 000 devices and putting 10, 000 devices into the market, then, they can't really dictate to an OEM necessarily, to leverage the technology or an abort it. But, at the same time, as I say, there are options for them to adopt it with the PCME[MH2]  UICCs but, the relative confusion about that and the terminology sometimes just requires a lot of education and it's something new, as you said, for the mass market. I mean, automotive has been using it for a long time but there's always a period of time where if there's any significant changes or more complexity, then, it puts people off because obviously they see it as a risk.

[00:13:22] Matt Hatton: So the main conversation around IoT connectivity and the impact of eSIM is around the handling of remote sim provisioning you touched on it a little bit in, what you were saying earlier in terms of the ability to manage profiles in field and so on.

What's the status with it at the moment? How available is it? Um, and how does it work compared to traditional? SIM cards. Well, rather than having to swap out a plastic SIM card, you can do it over the air. But, um, let's, let's delve into that a little bit. Can We? 

[00:13:58] Sam Colley: Yeah, so it's status. You know, it's obviously been around for a number of years, but I think it's probably good to touch on the historical, I guess, approach to eSIM, and the two original standards that were released how they work. So initially, when he was first deployed, there was two standards.

There was the SGP02 standard, which was targeted for M2M. And obviously there was SGP22, which was more for consumer use. So within smartphones and so one, essentially the consumer side was more QR code based and that essentially required two people, right? So, well, two devices, you know, or a picture and a device.

So you could then download that that eSIM, whereas they developed the O2[MH3]  environment, to work in what we would define as like a headless device, a device without a screen that can be remotely provisioned. And this was really targeted at IoT devices, and it required essentially, SMTP platform which essentially then allowed for electronic SIMs or electronic profiles to be created, loaded into a piece of software and then basically on request.

So you'd send a request in to say, Hey, I'm going to send you a new profile, It would deliver that profile to the SIM in the field. And that would, as I say, require, SMS, which was also one of its limitations. The kind of goal of that technology was to have this open environment where you could then switch from one operator to another operator.

But between MNOs and potentially even between the providers of the platforms themselves, that potentially open ecosystem became quite a closed ecosystem. And so it required a lot of, like, heavy integrations if you ever wanted to switch between platforms or have this interoperability available and particularly, the MNOs themselves weren't super keen to allow you to take their profile off and exchange it with something else.

So, you know, it really, I think, impacted the adoption of the eSIM and where we saw maybe some different approaches was around SGP.22 approach. So whilst initially it was designed to have, the need for this device to scan something or whatever, there was, some non-standardised approaches, which ended up becoming known as like the LPAe[MH4] so a local provisioning agent, but within the SIM card, that should allowed you to adopt the consumer technology within the IT environment and so basically you would take the, the provisioning agent off the device itself, and then you pop it on the SIM, and then that would allow for you to trigger, profile downloads and things via the SIM card itself.

So what we've we then saw, I suppose, was this kind of a new approach. So we're realizing that eSIM really important. There's a lot of like drivers for adopting eSIM within IoT to really drive down cost, increase security and really achieve the numbers that we've always talked about.

And so there's this new standard SGP.32, which really kind of takes some of the elements of both of the original standards and develop something that's much more scalable and adoptable and truly interoperable, between the different carriers and also the different providers of the platform in order to deliver, eSIM basically, to the masses and then. I mentioned earlier that one of the drawbacks here is there's still this, this provisioning agent that's needed on the hardware itself, which isn't a significant piece of software that's required, but it is needed. And I think it definitely delivers the best experience in the new standards, which we can talk about later, but for very lightweight devices. You know, there is this kind of feedback from the market that they can't host or support that size application. And so there's also now being developed alongside the standards, an IPEs[MH5]  kind of, implementation, which is then taking again that provisioning agent off the device and putting it onto the SIM card.

And that will then make it available to you. Pretty much any device, you know, even if the hardware manufacturers haven't yet adopted the IPAs themselves. So I think, There's been a lot of evolution and obviously some of the benefits I think have been limited to date simply because of the implementation, but we're really seeing that change I think and there's a lot of hopes pinned on this new standard and we'll see we'll see how it goes.

[00:18:00] Matt Hatton: Yeah, third time lucky is how Paul Bradley at Kigen has referred to it, which I think is a fair description. It's, uh, it does drive out a lot of the complexity and makes it more available for use in certain particular deployment scenarios. You don't need SMS on the device, for instance, you don't need user interface.

Effectively it's an evolution of 22, but it does, remove some of the, or adds in some additional features on 22 standard certainly positive things we think. 

[00:18:25] Sam Colley: It doesn't require SMS, but what's funny and they say it like this is third time lucky, hopefully, but we do see some requests from certain parties, to have an SMS variant of 32. So include the ability for SMS to be used. So, you know, the technology is there to remove it And yet there's this kind of pull back to the, to the bygone era that that didn't work for anyone. And so you then question why these requests being made, how flexible will it be? Will it be as open as we want it to be? On paper, I believe it's third time… it should be third time lucky.

But, I think the reality we have to wait until, we obviously have the standard fully released, hopefully, by the end of the year. And then, start seeing implementations and how people are going about that. But I do agree that, you know, this is the best opportunity we have to really see broader eSIM adoption. 

[00:19:18] Matt Hatton: Yeah. The joys of standardization, I think I'll refer to, in there. I want to talk a little bit about how enterprises are adopting which vertical sectors, particularly those that might be interested in SGP.32. And maybe how they think of it in the context of, you know, Some other offerings, not everything is going to be an eSIM.

Some things are going to be multi-MC or single-MC or whatever. So there are a bunch of options for adopters. So how do you see those trends going?

[00:19:48] Sam Colley: Yeah, as I mentioned, I think so far it's been slower than we expected, but as we said, they haven't, the standards haven't really delivered what we're expecting from flexibility and interoperability piece. But I think automotive obviously has always been a massive adopter of eSIM and that's really what drove the initial kind of standards, I think, And I think we're seeing now more the need for IoT devices to be in the field for longer. That's really also what's really pushing more and more people to really understand the need for it. Um, but from a personal perspective, I've started to see a lot of requests coming, From point of sale type applications as well, I think, that kind of market expands, with the likes of square and other stripe, et cetera, all these different companies who are now putting devices more readily in the field, um, before maybe they were just more, more online payment gateways, um, or even banks in particular as well with their handhelds are obviously been connected for a long time, um, but have experienced challenges with changing technologies and environments, you know, and they're all wanting to secure these devices, not from a security perspective, obviously, but, but in terms of the lifespan of these devices for as long, as long as possible.

I think utilities is, is another place where we have a lot of conversations around eSIM this particularly in North America stems from, um, the desire to deploy private networks as well for utilities. So, you know, large utilities are looking to deploy, Maybe even specific spectrum, like the Anterix[MH6]  spectrum, for example, in North America they are really looking to leverage both the public and private infrastructures and the way they path. They see to be able to do this most effectively is using eSIM, um, in particular, and then really kind of like any enterprise. That's really wanting to deploy globally. I mean, the world is becoming very complicated from a technology deployment perspective.

If you look at CAT-m, et cetera, you know, in NB-IoT, the global rollouts of those is somewhat limited, I would say, versus the expectations maybe seven, eight years ago. so you really need a lot of flexibility in terms of what you're provisioning. We're seeing a lot of regulatory challenges, right. Or coming up and more and more happening around the world where, you know, you need to be able to deploy a local service in that country.

Versus having a roaming service and also the changing need for applications for lower latency or lower cost if it's high bandwidth, you know, not being able to rely on roaming as readily. And I think, you know, without eSIM, managing that becomes far too complex, far too expensive. Whereas with eSIM, you can still manufacture a single device and then just provision and I think with the way that SGP.32 works, it allows for a lot more simpler automation, right?

Because it's driven from the device. So yours device can say “Hey. I'm here”. “This is where I am”. And then, you know, you can use software to say, “okay, provision this profile to it”. So you can cut out a lot of complexity, I guess, within the provisioning process as well and the manufacturing process.

And then I think you asked about how that can kind of maybe work alongside other technologies like multi-IMSI and I think they are extremely complimentary technologies because there is still a cost to any eSIM transaction at the end of the day. And it is still slightly kind of clunkier and requires, you know, a certain amount of data to process that, that profile download and you know, if you have a global application and you just want to cost optimize, then you can deploy eSIM almost as a, as a fullback mechanism, but you can, within that eSIM profile that you've developed, have a Multi-IMSI applet.

That's kind of optimizing your global coverage as well. So I think, you can eSIM, and multi-IMSI within the eSIM environment readily, and I think it really does add a lot of value for those kind of global applications, particularly ones that are perfectly fine to leverage roaming, but want the option of localization in say, a Turkey or Brazil or a UAE where regulation requires it.

[00:23:37] Matt Hatton: One final thing, um, before we get onto our amusing or amazing tech news section. How do you think, see things evolving? There's a lot of people who have suggested that SGP.32 is, particularly a game changer for how IoT connectivity is going to be delivered. Do you see it as that? Or do you see it as part of a continuum of how things have always been done?

I'd be interested in that.

[00:23:59] Sam Colley: I believe there will be elements of it that are, that are game changing for sure. I think it's more for me, like I was just mentioning in the provisioning flexibility and the automation of that provisioning that will really accelerate the willingness for people to adopt this, this cellular technology as the technology of choice.

Um, simply because, you know, they don't really have to think about it. If you can pre-program a bunch of rules into a cloud. You know, then the device then triggers, provision me, X, Y, or Z, then, I think the headaches, uh, uh, almost removed and you can then use that same technology to cost optimize further down the line.

You could set rules, in a smart enough cloud to say, okay, if. You know, this device, maybe it's using roaming, but if it's been in a static location for six months and has been on this network, then provision a local profile on that network and save me however many, euros a month. So there's a lot of optimization that can occur as a result of it.

I think, as opposed to the, maybe the. Fundamentals of the technology changing themselves. Um, I do see it is also quite game changing in terms of how it should open up the environment. Um, particularly for MVNOs, I think, and the value of an MVNO in the IoT space may be quite significant.

You know, be significantly higher moving forward if there is that level of flexibility versus, previously where maybe MNOs were kind of dominant because it was just a single MNO on a device. And therefore, you know, why not just work directly with, with the MNO, but now you want that flexibility.

So it'd be interesting to see how the NVNOs space evolves around this technology and, and who can capitalize on that the most. Um, so I do see it as. As kind of game changing in many ways, but in other ways, you know, it is still very standards based. It probably isn't the most optimal implementation of the technology in terms of creating the most flexibility and reducing, , cost exponentially necessarily in, in, in the architecture, but compared to what came before, I think, it's significant.

And then I'd. I think, I mentioned iSIM earlier, but I think the next phase of iSIM will also see RSP enabled within the iSIM environment, which, is kind of like the next step on from where we are with, either embedded SIMs or physical SIMs enabling the technology. So I think we'll see, um, see kind of an interesting interaction between the two technologies over the next few years.

Um, and, and particularly for. Those lightweight, low cost type devices the IoT or mass IoT I think will be built on. Um, it'd be really interesting to see which, which direction that goes in from a, from an ISIM perspective, but with the flexibility of eSIM technology, within that environment. 

[00:26:31] Matt Hatton: Sam we could talk about this stuff for hours, but we're going to have to bring things to a close. But as mentioned, What I want to do right at the end is, well, we ask our guests to bring along a light hearted or amazing tech news story they've seen recently. What's taking your, fancy there?

[00:26:50] Sam Colley: Yeah, I think that's the kind of a specific story, but more kind of, I guess, a use case. Um, and I think, you know, there's IoT sometimes kind of trivialize a little bit right with use cases like ordering milk when from, you know, fridge ordering your milk or something. Um, but I think IoT benefits just go so much further than that.

And I think one of the things that we've had a couple of customers. Doing and I think really interests me is how, you know, animals in their environments that are generally under threat and, you know, now more than ever, as we as, as human technology advances, uh, really being helped and really benefiting from technology driven via IoT. So, you know, whether it's, you know, from perimeter monitoring to kind of, you know, protect from poachers, or whether it's crowdsourcing data of marine life to kind of review, to understand, you know, whale locations or numbers or fish stocks, or even just kind of proactive alerting to, infrastructure companies.

So, train lines, for example, if there's a I think the one I read was about a herd of reindeers that were often getting hit by trains in, in the Nordic countries, that are going fast. Can the train drivers can now be alerted to the herds and they can slow down a little bit and, and, you know, hopefully save some, some lives as we all want our Christmas presents delivered on time, Um and so, uh, and, even then to honeybee monitoring and things, which is something, you know, a customer of ours, It's done for gosh, like 10 years or so, but, you know, obviously the bees importance to the ecosystem hugely important. Um, and, and that obviously impacts us directly. So, you know, I think for me, it's just how IoT can be used for good.

And I think there's a, there's so much we can do in the future. If we kind of get to the point where we're sharing, you know, data more broadly within the IoT ecosystem and really connecting the dots between all these different siloed applications and pieces of infrastructure to really benefit, The populace and, and also obviously everything that keeps the populace going and, and, and makes our planet special.

Um, so I think that's kind of positive kind of view of, of IoT story. Yeah. 

[00:28:52] Matt Hatton: excellent stuff. As a beekeeper, I'm a beekeeper myself, I can only echo that, although it's a terrible thing that I've not actually adopted any IoT solutions to monitor my bee hive, so, uhm…

[00:28:54] Sam Colley: Because you keep them so well, 

[00:29:05] Matt Hatton: Well, maybe it's, maybe it's that constantly in there right? So it could be that.

Okay, so my, funny news story. Kind of funny. There was a report out, just this week about, uh, China looking to supercharge adoption of mobile IoT. So it's going to establish some IoT industrial clusters, some industry demonstration bases. It's going to strengthen the foundational IoT network and do a whole raft of things.

It announced in order to try to drive further adoption of cellular based, particularly IoT in China. This makes me laugh a little bit because currently, or rather at the last count, around about end of end of last year, China accounted for about two thirds of the world's cellular IoT connections depends how you count it, but certainly they're, punching above their weight already.

So it. Kind of made me laugh a little bit because maybe it's actually the rest of the world that needs this rather than necessarily China…

[00:30:12] Sam Colley: Certainly does give a positive indication to the size of the remaining market in the rest world that's a kind of funny way to look at it, but evidently there's even more potential there as well 

[00:30:25] Matt Hatton: Absolutely. If the rest of the world can catch up, it will be billions and billions of devices.

[00:30:30] Sam Colley: Yeah. 

[00:30:31] Matt Hatton: Excellent Sam. It's been extremely interesting discussion. Thank you so much for joining us.

[00:30:36] Sam Colley: Thanks for having me. It's been great. 

[00:30:39] Matt Hatton: And with that, I will draw the podcast to a close. Just a reminder that you can subscribe to the Trending Tech Podcast wherever you found us today and indeed, thank you for joining us and we're delighted to have you listening in as part of the growing audience around the world. We'll be back with another edition of the Trending Tech Podcast soon, focusing on another aspect of digital transformation.

In the meantime, please keep checking IoT-Now.com, VanillaPlus.com where you can find more tech news videos, top level interviews and event reviews, plus a whole lot more. Thanks again for joining and bye for now.

[00:31:12] Sam Colley: Thanks. Matt. 

 [MH1]Yes, this is right

 [MH2]Not sure about this one, Sam?

 [MH3]This should be “02”

 [MH4]correct

 [MH5]Sam should confirm

 [MH6]Correct, but Sam’s comment so he should confirm