THE SKINNY NETWORK

Picture this. PERI GmbH SE, a specialist in formwork and scaffolding systems in Weissenhorn, Bavaria, was facing daily challenges in construction work across 70+ countries, especially in recording the deployment or storage locations of formwork elements more quickly and precisely.

- BY PRATIMA HARIGUNANI [e-mail]

It found its answer in a combination of two IoT tracking systems. The first one for tapping Long-Term Evolution for Machines (LTE-M), NB-IoT, or 2G devices connected to Telekom's IoT Cloud, showing which part is on which construction site. The second one uses Bluetooth Low Energy to show the exact position of the formwork elements on the site.

The company can now gain an up-to-date overview of rented parts, improve stock management, and pinpoint exact delivery times for customers.

Then there is a Northern Irish startup, CreevX, that automates legionella (a bacteria that poses a serious health risk when water sits unused in pipes for extended periods) compliance (Regulations such as the UK's HSG 274 require building operators to monitor water temperatures) in commercial buildings.

It was a manual process, but this company uses IoT sensors and automated flushing via an IoT device that monitors water temperatures every 15 minutes (which also automatically flushes stagnant water through the pipes, if needed). The connectivity here uses LoRaWAN to communicate with a gateway, which then transmits data to the cloud.

Such use cases point to a specific new need emerging in the industry: simply having IoT for collecting intelligence at the periphery will not suffice unless those smart sensors and things are also lean, thin, and low-power, bandwidth and connectivity-wise. In short, it is a great time for LPWAN, NB-IoT, and Reduced Capability (RedCap) to serve enterprises with a very different appetite.

As Deutsche Telekom shares, overall, the adoption of Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) technologies took off several years ago. “We continue to see high growth in the use of NB-IoT/LTE-M connectivity. The technologies NB-IoT/LTE-M have technically matured (higher performance/feature set) and are a fixed basis of the future 3GPP roadmap,” explained a company spokesperson.