May 16, 2025 • 36 mins
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The promise of connecting "everything" to the internet has remained frustratingly out of reach for over a decade. Despite bold predictions of 50 billion connected devices by 2020, the industry achieved just 11 billion – a mere 20% of expectations. Why? As Nick Earle of Eseye, explains, we dramatically underestimated the complexity of creating truly global connectivity.
This conversation unveils the missing piece that's finally enabling the Internet of Things to deliver on its potential: ubiquitous connectivity that works everywhere, every time. Drawing from his experience leading global tech giants and now Eseye, Nick reveals how the traditional carrier model was fundamentally misaligned with IoT's needs – and how his company's revolutionary "federation" approach, similar to the airline industry's Star Alliance, is changing everything.
What makes this discussion particularly compelling is the real-world impact. Global brands like Amazon, Shell, and Coca-Cola are already leveraging Eseye's technology to deploy single-product SKUs worldwide, transforming their manufacturing, supply chains, and business models. The ROI isn't coming from the data itself, but from the operational efficiencies of building once and deploying anywhere – delivering 100-500x returns over connectivity costs.
Beyond the technology, Nick offers a fascinating perspective on what he calls the "third wave of tech disruption" in telecommunications, where eSIM technology and new standards are breaking the 40-year carrier lock on connectivity. For business leaders contemplating IoT strategies, this provides crucial context on why previous attempts may have faltered and how the landscape has fundamentally changed.
Whether you're leading a global enterprise or a nimble startup, this episode illuminates how the barriers to IoT adoption are finally falling away, making connected product deployment more accessible and scalable than ever before. The future where devices intelligently choose their own best connectivity method – be it cellular, satellite, or something else – is closer than you might think.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey everyone, fascinating discussion today as
we dive into the Internet ofThings.
And what is the third wave oftech disruption being led by a
company called SI Nick?
How are you?
Speaker 2 (00:16):
I'm great, Evan, Very nice to meet you and hello
everyone who's watching.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Great to see you.
Summer is here for the UK andBoston here in the Northeast, so
really enjoying this time.
Before we talk about SI, maybeintroduce yourself the company,
the mission, the vision.
What are we looking at?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Yeah, so SI is a privately held company.
We're based in the UK, althoughwe are global.
We have customers all the wayaround the world.
We we do some of the biggestcompanies in the world, like
amazon's, uh, iot, we do shells,iot, bps, iot, uh, coca-cola's
vending machines, mars vendingmachines, um, and we basically
(00:59):
deliver uh.
The elevator pitch, if you like, is um, and we can go into how
we do it.
We deliver a hundred percentconnectivity uh globally, um and
so um.
We basically compete on thebasis that we actually get you
to 99 plus connectivity from asingle product skew uh in a
(01:21):
device and that's why we've wonthese really big accounts and
how increasingly we're workingwith operators.
But we can go into that a bitlater on.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Fantastic.
So let's set the scene.
I mean IoT has been aroundlonger than Wi-Fi, longer than
most wireless technologies, andyet it's really coming into
force now.
Why has it taken so long tofinally take off?
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Yeah, you're right, it has.
I mean, I've been in theindustry a while it's not my
first rodeo and I remember I wasat Cisco for 13 years and ended
up as part of the exec team,and I remember, in 2011, we
confidently predicted there'd be20, sorry, 50 billion things
connected by 2020.
And never thinking that I'd beable to comment post 2020 and
(02:05):
look back and see how accuratethat was, we actually got to 11
billion as an industry and soyou know, even before it was
called iot, it was called m2mand you could argue, before that
it was called scada, and youknow we we only got to 20 of
predictions and and that thereinlies the lies, the rub, um, in
that we kind of assumed that itwould be easy, and I think we
(02:27):
had a mental model.
I know we had a mental model inour mind that says, well, we
can do it on a phone.
I mean, I can take my phoneRemember 2007, the iPhone.
I can take my phone abroad andit roams, it works right.
So it's just a device with acircuit and software, and we
thought IoT would be the same.
And, of course, so isn't it?
Just a device with a circuitand software and we thought IoT
(02:50):
would be the same, and of courseit isn't.
And then what we found is that,oh, it's actually.
You know, there's roamingagreements, but only some
roaming agreements.
I mean, in general, the averageconnectivity is 85% globally
and what that means is that ifyou want to create a single
product, manufacture it once andjust send it around the world
(03:11):
and have it connect what we callubiquitous connectivity you're
going to get 85% on average.
And what that means is, let'ssay you're doing a healthcare
use case or whatever, you've got15% of cases where you're not
having connectivity and thenroaming agreements break.
So we've missed, as an industry,we've completely missed
expectations.
(03:31):
We totally underestimated thecomplexity.
We basically my analogy is wesold, you know parts, like
selling parts of a car andassume the customers would
assemble the car themselves acar and assumed the customers
would assemble the carthemselves.
And actually, at the heart ofmy company and the founders who
started it before I joined, thebrilliance of it was that they
(03:53):
designed something which saidthat will never work.
You cannot glue proprietarysystems together and get 100%
connectivity.
So they said we have to build adifferent model, and that was
the genesis of SI, by the way,evan.
Interestingly enough, theseguys the founders.
They created Zigbee.
So you know, we all know, it'sin your remote control, about 5
(04:14):
billion devices.
But that is ubiquitousconnectivity your TV remote.
Should you ever decide totravel with it around the world?
If you ever wanted to do that,it would work on every TV.
Decide to travel with it aroundthe world?
If you ever wanted to do that,it would work on every tv.
Um, you know, zigbee isubiquitous connectivity from a
chip on a board inside a device.
So they basically said whydon't we reinvent cellular and
design a cellular solution thatworks like zigbee?
(04:36):
And uh, essentially we.
That's what we do.
We sell 99, 99% plus globalconnectivity.
You know, 192 countries in theworld.
It's quite a challenge andthat's why we've won those big
brands that I mentioned.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Fantastic.
You've also called this periodwe're in the third wave of tech
disruption.
What does that mean exactly insimpler terms, for business
leaders, tech leaders?
What's?
So unique about the presenttime.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
You know, I have been in the industry for 40 years
and I think you can learn a lotfrom what's happened, because
there's really nothing new.
So I'll talk about the firstand the second ways of
disruption and I'll do it frommy own perspective because it
was there.
I remember when I first joinedCisco.
It was just around the timewhen voice over IP was coming in
(05:31):
as a new technology to replacecircuit switch.
And what people forget whenthey look back is people, a lot
of people were really skepticaloh, it's just tech, it's not.
You know, I'm going to carry onselling circuit switch.
Well, we all know what happened.
The guys who adopted packetswitching leapfrogged and got
the market, took the early leadand the pecking order changed.
(05:53):
And so disruption is isdifficult because you have to do
change management and it'sthreatening.
It threatens your economicmodel.
We call that the first wave ofdisruption for telecom economic
model.
We call that the first wave ofdisruption for telecom.
The second wave, just before Ileft Cisco, was cloud.
I ended up for Cisco runningthe cloud program globally and
(06:15):
it was all about the fact thatthe service providers at the
time they all had hosted datacenter businesses, so large part
of their business.
Um wasn't just selling data uhdata, voice video into consumer
handsets and things like that,but they all they were hosting
enterprises applications on datacenters.
That was big for most telcos.
(06:36):
Well, of course, aws came along, where you know, for ten
dollars a week on your ownpersonal credit card you had
access to a huge compute and allthe developer tools.
That business just collapsed,it was hollowed out and they all
had to scramble and do it.
And so the question thenbecomes okay, you know,
technology enabled disruption.
(06:56):
What's happening now and Ibelieve many people do that
we're now actually seeing thethird wave of disruption in
telecom, which is, as always,these disruptions are enabled by
a new standard, uh and into abetter interoperability.
In the case of iot, it's thee-sim which breaks, breaks the
(07:18):
40-year proprietary lock of thetelecom mz into the sim, so you
can now have multiple operatorsin the sim.
It's the euicc standard whichmakes it an official standard so
everyone can interoperate.
And then there's this new umcapability called sgp32, without
getting too technical about it,but basically gives control to
(07:39):
the user, and the user can say I, you, the, the operator used to
control the switch, chose theroaming agreements, you know
your way or the highway, but Ipress the button, I'm actually
going to go to somewhere else.
So all of that is disruption,and with disruption comes
opportunity.
I believe is a same thing isthat a number of operators are
(08:09):
now seeing this as anopportunity for them to become
global, and a bunch of operatorsare sitting and watching it
wondering is this going toaffect them.
But I absolutely believedisruption is underway and this
is an opportunity, which is oneof the reasons why we aren't
just selling to largeenterprises.
We now.
We are now the platform forAT&T globally.
That was a big announcement wedid in Barcelona.
(08:29):
So AT&T have 135 milliondevices.
So we have become the platformfor AT&T, the white label
platform.
We are doing the platform forTELUS in Canada and we are doing
the platform for MTN across 18countries in Africa.
So we are working withoperators to enable them to take
(08:50):
advantage of this disruption sothey can become global with a
SaaS solution as opposed tobuilding it themselves, which is
their DNA, but all their moneyis going into 5G, so they don't
have any money to build itthemselves.
They don't have the timebecause this disruption comes at
you really quickly.
So, yeah, we're still doingdirect big enterprises, you know
(09:14):
giving you some brands, but nowmost of our activity is white
labeling, like AT&T, and weexpect more to follow.
We're helping the operatorsmanage the disruption so that
they can launch a new service asan off-balance sheet
pay-as-you-use service veryrapidly to take advantage of the
(09:40):
next wave of disruption, whichis a huge opportunity for people
.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Yeah, what a time.
And you mentioned those amazingbrands, those big enterprises.
How are they using connecteddevices and data today?
Compared to just five years ago, for example, what's changed?
Speaker 2 (10:12):
single product SKUs.
So I think one of themisunderstandings about IoT is
that the ROI is at the front end, ie the device.
You can get data out of thedevice and therefore you will
get more marketing data oryou'll sell more devices.
Actually, I don't think that isthe ROI for IoT.
The ROI for IoT is the abilityto make a single product in a
single factory with ubiquitousconnectivity inside it and
(10:32):
deploy it anywhere in the worldand it just works.
So, to give you specificexamples, we do all of Shell's
EV chargers right, and Shellmake them in Vietnam and they
make them once as a sealeddevice.
It's not an open device whereyou insert SIMs.
When it gets to the country,make it once, ship it around the
world, turn it on and it works.
(10:56):
The ROI for only having one lineof EV chargers, for having
simpler manufacturing, simplersupply chain, simpler
installation, simplermaintenance.
One portal, one set of APIs, is100, if not 500 times more
return on investment than thecost of the connectivity,
(11:16):
because remember, data isgetting cheaper and cheaper and
cheaper.
When I joined SI seven yearsago, the cost of a gigabyte of
data was about $11.
The market price for a gigabyteof IoT data now is about $1.60,
right.
So that's about a 25% declineper year.
So the money's not in the dataanymore.
(11:37):
The ROI is that can you savemoney at your backend costs by
manufacturing single SKU?
So, amazon, we do Amazonautomatic door openers for all
the Amazon Prime trucks aroundthe world.
It's a single device that youcan put inside the buzzer of an
apartment block where you getentry.
(11:58):
That will work and they can putit in any door in the world.
I do it in my own podcastcalled IoT Leaders, and one of
the episodes is Amazon.
They talk about owning everydoor in the world.
Amazon don't do small projectsso that the prime driver can
gain secure access and othercompanies like FedEx, ups or
(12:21):
whatever can use it, because youdon't want two devices or three
devices in your door.
So the answer to the questionis people are now making single
global product SKUs which willwork anywhere in the world.
Now, in order to do that, youhave to have a different model
to the classic MNO, mvna, mvnomodel, because it cannot do that
(12:43):
.
The standard MNO model was notbuilt to do ubiquitous global
connectivity, and so that'sreally the heart of why we're
different.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Fantastic.
So you've solved theinteroperability challenge and
you're leveraging all this newtechnology like eSIM.
The other barrierstraditionally have been security
, terrible device security,questions around cloud security,
privacy concerns.
How are you addressing thoseconcerns?
Speaker 2 (13:16):
So maybe I'll answer that, linking to the previous
question.
So one of the differences ourarchitecture is basically it's
kind of similar to the StarAlliance in the airline industry
in that we have a ringarchitecture, not a hub and
spoke, and we have 25 operatorsthat we can localize the
(13:36):
connection OTA so we canactually either roam onto those
25 operators on all of theirroaming agreements so that makes
900 networks or we can localizethe connection OTA so we can
switch a device from AT&T toVerizon in the US and localize,
not just run, and that's reallyimportant, especially for 5G
(13:59):
that gets going.
Now, on security, everything isencrypted and through a private
APN, and I mentioned SGP32earlier.
Some of your listeners, viewers, will be very familiar with
that.
But the idea of switching theoperator yourself, like your
Kindle does or your Apple Watchdoes, the problem is take one
(14:21):
example is yeah, but how do youswitch the APN?
I mean the APN is different byoperator.
If it's fixed IP addresses, theIP address is different.
So what we use is a private APNand fully encrypted data.
We don't store any data.
It's all data in motion, dataat rest, and we use a
(14:45):
public-private key encryption atthe device level to make sure
that you've got auditability,traceability and proof of
provenance of the data, ie it'snot been intercepted from the
device to your cloud portal.
So security and trust isbecoming a really big part of
this.
And using the public internetto get your data, it's very hard
(15:12):
to actually get that trustcomponent.
So that's why we have our ownprivate software defined network
with 20 data centers and we useencrypted APNs across 25
operators.
It's like the Star Alliance.
Buy an airline ticket fromUnitedcom.
You can fly on 34 airlines.
You'll get United points, useUnited lounges and pay once to
(15:36):
United, but you can fly on 34airlines.
That business model which weare now used to but used to be
revolutionary.
That business model is whatwe've built, if you like, for
IoT.
That business model is whatwe've built, if you like, for
IoT.
So AT&T now have a globalsolution called AT's Global Sim
Advance, they call it.
You can buy a global solutionfrom AT&T and it will work
(16:00):
across 25 operators all the wayaround the world either roaming
or localization but it's allsold to you by AT&T.
That's the first time they'veever been able to do that,
because for their entire history, all AT&T have been able to do
is sell you AT&T connectivityand roaming where they have it.
So it's a new model based oncollaboration between operators,
(16:25):
like the Star Alliance, whichis a proven business model, and
there's multiple like Visa, infinancial services.
It's similar.
You have to be abstracted and beagnostic and virtualize your
switch in the cloud to provideubiquitous global connectivity.
That's a lot of big words, butessentially what it means is
(16:46):
that you have to enable anoperator to actually sell
competitors' connectivitythrough their brand and the IoT
industry and the traditionallegacy platforms like Cisco
Jasper that I'm very familiarwith, or Ericsson's platform.
They were never built to dothat.
They don't do what's calledeSIM orchestration.
(17:09):
So this is the disruptive effectis that a few operators I
mentioned three have made themove and they've said I want to
be a global leader like Telus.
Telus aren't even the biggestoperator in Canada right,
they're the second biggest butTelus can sell a single eSIM and
(17:30):
connect a device in 192countries and they do that with
a software platform.
So they've made the leap to thenew world and I think this is
the disruption that's going tobe played out over the next few
years.
It's great for customersbecause you get the single
product SKU and you get the ROIand you get the connectivity.
You don't have to worry aboutit.
(17:50):
It's just ubiquitous, it justworks as we describe it.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
No, that's fantastic and it's a missing piece of the
puzzle.
However, I would say you knowthe telcos carriers.
We love them, but theytraditionally haven't
necessarily been, you know, likea consultative sort of solution
, architecture-led sale.
So if you're an enterprise CEO,cio, starting an IoT journey
(18:19):
maybe you have a hospitalnetwork or fleet or you know who
knows the business how do youadvise them, yeah, to execute on
an IoT strategy, transformationstrategy.
What's the first step thatyou've seen leading to success,
and how can they be successfulin leveraging this technology
(18:39):
from?
Speaker 2 (18:40):
the telco.
Yeah, from the telco.
Yeah, that was the importantbit at the end, because we still
sell direct, but increasinglywe're becoming the Jasper of the
operators In the deal with.
Let's take AT&T in the dealwith AT&T, we are actually, we
(19:00):
work alongside them and empowerthem.
So every prospect that AT&T get, they introduce us to the
prospect, and the reason they dothat is because of what you
just said.
This is not what they're usedto.
I mean, they're used to simpsondata and they're really good at
it 135 million connections,simpson data.
Now you start talking about asolution.
You're talking aboutarchitecture, design.
(19:21):
You're talking about firmwareoptimization in the device,
which no one's ever had to thinkabout.
You're talking about projectmanagement and implementation.
So we augment.
One of our services isn't justthe SaaS platform, but it's the
empowerment channel empowerment,augmenting the operator to lead
them through, to teach them howto fish.
So eventually we're not needed.
(19:45):
I always like to say there'snothing new At Cisco.
When I left 2017, it was a $50billion company, I think, but
you know they did 80% indirectand 20% direct.
But a large part of Cisco'schannel business the 80% was
empowering the channel toactually give solutions and
(20:08):
value so they could move up,could move up the stack.
And when you look at 5g and andyou know they're almost a
billion dollars that thenetworks are now spending on
implementing 5g stacks one ofthe reasons they're doing 5g is
not because it's just another g,it's somebody said to me the
other day it's because and it'snot just because of speed 5g the
(20:29):
way it's architected, and 5g sa, the standalone um.
It's because and it's not justbecause of speed ig the way it's
architected, and 5gsa, thestandalone um.
It gives them an opportunity tocreate, to move up the stack of
value-added services.
You know network slicing, qos,latency, but also a lot more
than that.
Uh, you can actually do devicemanagement as a service, as a
battery management, uh,multi-rat.
(20:49):
The operators all want to beable to move up the stack
because the data price is goingdown and so we're working with
them to help them to be asolution seller so they can
increase their ARPU, becausethey have to because of the data
price decline.
So it isn't just a SaaS buy ourSaaS and good luck.
(21:10):
We're involved in every singleAT&T sale.
We're involved in all the TELUSsales.
We're on with MTN.
I mean we're doing there's 18different opcos across Africa in
MTN, so it's kind of like 18service providers.
So you have to be a solutionscompany in the first place.
(21:32):
It's not just a mvno that doesmulti-mc.
So there is change managementand that's the most difficult
part, which is why it will takemulti-years for this to roll out
.
But the direction I don't thinkis in doubt.
The direction is what we arebetting on the mno's, who today
do 80%, 85% of all connectionsglobally, and we just need to
(21:53):
enable them to do this.
There are some companies whobelieve the M&Os won't make this
transition.
We think no, no, no, they will,because they have the assets,
they have the pipes, they havethe brand, but they just need
some help.
And so it's not just software,it's also empowering them to do
(22:14):
solution selling.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Brilliant, and so you know, oftentimes large
enterprises are the leaders.
Do you think smaller companies,smes or startups can take
advantage of IoT, or is thismore of a big enterprise?
Speaker 2 (22:29):
No, it's not a big enterprise thing and in fact I
mean we have 800 customers as SI, of which, for instance, at&t
is one.
But we were a direct-onlycompany for about 14 years and
(22:49):
the advantage that smallcompanies have is they can move
quickly.
Large companies are like, youknow, the ocean liner.
It takes a long time for them.
Small companies are like thespeedboat.
And the question is the problemwith IoT, the adoption.
You know, we promised 50billion.
We got to 11 billion.
It was because of thecomplexity, the proprietary
components.
You had to build it yourself.
If you can package it in a waythat's frictionless and easy to
(23:12):
absorb and you switch it on,then then small companies can
absolutely take advantage of it.
Let me give you an exampleFixed wireless access.
Most small companies have arouter, as you call it over
there.
Having lived and worked in theUS, I'll use that language.
(23:33):
They have a router, but thatrouter connects to the service
provider, but the serviceprovider can't do 100% domestic
coverage.
So in the US, at&t doesn't havean IoT roaming agreement with
either Verizon or Timo, so it'snot even national coverage,
right, never mind global.
(23:54):
The federation approach, whichis how we describe our model,
solves that.
But if you could take it andit's enabled by the SIM, the
tiny little eSIM 4 millimetersby 4 millimeters chip that's on
the board.
If you put the SIM in therouter and the SIM then connects
to the cloud platform.
Sim in the router, um and thesim then connects to the cloud
(24:16):
platform, the router becomes ahundred percent connectivity.
Um uh device that doesn't needan ethernet cable in um, it's a
standalone device that gives ahundred percent um wireless
access and that's a hugeopportunity for smbs.
And the same concept um is.
You know, if you put the SIM ina device, it could be a tracker
, it could be a medical device,something you wear around your
(24:37):
neck, it could be a watch we doGoogle Watch in Canada If you
put the SIM in the device on theboard.
So you have to delay a bit.
It isn't just plug a plasticSIM in, so you have to put the.
SIM in the device and we helpoptimize the firmware because
we're also a hardware company.
But once you've got that, thenactually you can get products to
(24:59):
market really quick and sellthem globally.
And the people who tend to takeadvantage of that are the
smaller companies.
Typically that's what happens.
It's the smaller companies whoget to market quickly with a new
innovative solution.
That puts pressure on the bigcompanies to react, as we were
saying earlier about theoperators.
So I think for SMBs, solutionslike fixed wireless or the
(25:21):
ability to create a new productwith 100% connectivity and if
you're a US company, say well, Iwon't just sell it in the US,
but I'll sell it in Mexico,maybe Latam, I'll sell it in
Canada and I'll sign up adistributor in Europe, in Asia,
and I just know that I don'thave to worry about who it's
going to connect to.
It's kind of the Zigbee thing.
(25:41):
Right, it's just if we sell,our SLA service level agreement
is 99% plus connectivity andthat's hard to do behind the
scenes.
But if you can do it becauseyou've architected the solution
at least in our case the way wehave then people say, okay,
great, I can concentrate on mybusiness because now I've got
(26:04):
iot the way I've always wantedit, which is how amazon, you
know, talk about Customers, talkabout it on my podcast is that
I actually now can like one lastexample, if I can.
We do Coca-Cola have a brandcalled Costa, which is a big
coffee chain.
It's particularly strong inEurope and in Australia.
We do all the coffee machinesfor Coca-Cola.
(26:27):
So you think about it, you'vewhich, that's a costa and uh, I
think starbucks.
Right, costa coffee coffeemachines are in garages, um and
uh convenience stores all aroundeurope and asia or middle east.
Starbucks are the big 800 poundgorilla.
(26:48):
It takes starbucks about threemonths, if they want to enter
into a new country, to find asite, build the store, train the
staff, fit it out, startselling the first cup of coffee
and then when you walk into thestore, they ask you what your
name is.
You say evan, they write itwith a sharpie on the side of a
cup and you walk out.
At that point they haven't aclue who you are because you
(27:08):
paid.
If you paid with a card, theydon't get the personal data from
the finance company.
Costa have one product SKU whichcontains our technology.
They can put that product SKUin a BP garage, say in Vietnam
I'm going to use Vietnam againthey can put it in the BP garage
in Vietnam, turn it on and thesame day it connects Wow, it
(27:30):
connects the same day, itconnects, wow, it connects the
same day.
So they have business agility.
The garage pays for electricity, the garage has to put the milk
in, the garage has to top upthe coffee and then the garage
just has to send money to Costa.
If the Vietnamese marketdoesn't like Costa coffee, they
switch the machine off and takeit out.
It's one square meter footprintand because you scan your QR
(27:53):
code, you're getting loyaltypoints.
But what they're getting isyour identity, so they know your
coffee buying habits, so theycan send you messages saying
Evan, it's 11 o'clock, youhaven't had your frappuccino yet
, or whatever it is.
So the benefits of singleproduct, sku, business agility,
(28:15):
make it once, deploy it anywhereare very significant.
You know they see it as almostlike a Starbucks killer because
it can take a long time.
But that's why Coca-Cola boughtthem, and so they are deploying
coffee machines all over theworld.
There's a big one in AtlantaAirport, directly opposite of
(28:38):
Starbucks, because people are inthe line at Starbucks.
It's taking a long time,they're rushing for the flight.
The other side of the corridoris the big coffee custom machine
.
It's called a barista bot, butthe point is, this is a new
business model and it enablesthe enterprises to compete with
other enterprises, and it'sbecause they can get to market
(28:59):
quickly, manufacture it once,deploy it quickly and get the
data, and so we see a ton of usecases like this.
But at the heart of it is eSIM,euicc and the ability to create
single global product SKU,which is what we promised in
2011, but we never delivered.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Wow, incredible.
So you're so far ahead of thecurve here.
I almost dare not ask where yousee IT going next, because
you're sort of living in thefuture, I mean how do you stay
ahead of the curve here, asthings will keep evolving
inevitably?
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Well, first of all, I think we're doing a few great
things, but we're not doingeverything great.
Let me just pour a bit of coldwater on that, although the
brands that I said you knowwe're only a small company the
brands that I said do givecredibility to the story In
terms of where it goes.
Next, I think that there is a.
(29:58):
What we've done so far as anindustry is that we've.
We've now seen the dawn ofoperator agnostic connectivity.
I want to let Star Alliance.
I want to fly on any airline.
So there's a thing in themiddle.
It's a tech company actuallycalled Star Alliance.
It's a tech company and a brand.
So we're trying to be the StarAlliance of the global MNOs and
(30:21):
we still sell direct.
Now, cellular is only 13%.
We all get obsessed aboutcellular.
It's only 13% of allconnections.
So satellite as an example, inrural areas where there aren't
towers, satellite is going to bethe dominant model and there's
(30:42):
a lot happening in satellite.
The Costa coffee machines willsay if they're in a BP garage,
if Wi-Fi is available, then usethat.
If not, use cellular.
So what you actually want isthe devices to be multi-RAT
agnostic.
If the device was operatoragnostic and provider of
(31:03):
multi-RAT agnostic and had theintelligence to say to sense it,
so only switch to another RATradio access type.
If signal strength is this andlatency is that, then what you
get is the device chooses theconnectivity.
Historically, historically, westarted off with the industry.
(31:24):
The operator chose theconnectivity because they
control the switch.
So it's my, I'm an operator,you connect to my network with
the sim that's in your deviceand it's either my network or my
roaming agreements.
And then the mvnos came out andsaid well, we're set above that
, we control the switch, whichmay be for two or three
operators.
What's actually happening nowis that you get operator
(31:47):
agnosticity, which is a realword, and you get rat radio
access type choices.
So the intelligence, like itdid in client server I mean we
always say it's new, it's notnew really, client-server.
You have the logic and the datain the three-tier or five-tier
(32:08):
server model, but there wasintelligence in the device.
So we believe that ultimatelythe device is going to choose
the connectivity.
So in 5G, if you want a certainlevel of quality service and a
certain level of network slicing, the device has to say this is
what I need for the use case andthe cloud platform has to say
(32:29):
I'll only switch you to anotherprovider who can provide those
levels of service.
So that's from the device in orthe edge in if, like the
historical model, is from theproviders out.
So where we we see it going isin order to get massive iot
people have been talking aboutthat 500 million devices, any
(32:49):
sensors, satellites a greatexample.
You know you tiny centers thatrun sensors that run off a
couple of aa batteries.
I mean 10 years off a couple ofaa batteries.
It's amazing what people aretalking about.
You know you can print.
You can talking about you canprint a battery and put it on
something and stick it in afield.
In order to get massive IoT,hundreds of billions of devices
(33:14):
you've got to take thesebarriers away, like operator
agnosticity.
You've got take all thepropriety stacks out and you
will need rat.
You know, if cellular, then useit.
If the price is okay, use, use,um, uh, laura.
If not, use cellular, but onlyif this.
So the logic moves to the edge.
(33:35):
We took about 80 ofapplications and data are going
to the edge.
Iot is a great example.
The logic.
Logic goes to the edge and theedge drives the center drives
the switching and that's how youget 500 billion things.
But you'll only get that sort ofadoption if the enterprises say
I make one, deploy everywhere.
(33:58):
And you see, in car companiescar companies want to make.
You know all the car companies,the width of all the cars are
the same because they make oneframe and all the models just
put different top parts.
It's different right?
Common manufacturing, commoncomponents, global distribution
these are the economics ofgrowth in manufacturing and they
(34:20):
need to be applied to IoT.
And if you can create globalsingle SKU and then bring the
price down and the logic down tosoftware in the microcontroller
actually in the device or inthe processor of the device, if
you can put the switch in thereand keep the price down so, for
(34:41):
instance, it can selectsatellite if it's a little
sensor in a wheat field in OhioThen you can actually get
massive IoT, which is what wereally want, as opposed to what
we've got right now, which ispartial IoT.
I think the latest data is 18billion IoT devices at the end
(35:04):
of last year.
It sounds a lot but it isn'tcompared to the potential that's
out there, and so you've got toget frictionless, open,
interoperable capabilities toget the inflection point of
adoption.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Wow, it's quite a mic drop moment.
So I think on that note we havesome food for thought, but
really amazing and interestingwork.
Congratulations, and onwardsand upwards with the third wave.
Congratulations, Nick.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Thanks, evan, good to talk to you.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Likewise, thanks for joining, thanks for listening
and watching everyone Take care.
Hey everyone, fascinating discussion today as
we dive into the Internet ofThings.
And what is the third wave oftech disruption being led by a
company called SI Nick?
How are you?
Speaker 2 (00:16):
I'm great, Evan, Very nice to meet you and hello
everyone who's watching.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Great to see you.
Summer is here for the UK andBoston here in the Northeast, so
really enjoying this time.
Before we talk about SI, maybeintroduce yourself the company,
the mission, the vision.
What are we looking at?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Yeah, so SI is a privately held company.
We're based in the UK, althoughwe are global.
We have customers all the wayaround the world.
We we do some of the biggestcompanies in the world, like
amazon's, uh, iot, we do shells,iot, bps, iot, uh, coca-cola's
vending machines, mars vendingmachines, um, and we basically
(00:59):
deliver uh.
The elevator pitch, if you like, is um, and we can go into how
we do it.
We deliver a hundred percentconnectivity uh globally, um and
so um.
We basically compete on thebasis that we actually get you
to 99 plus connectivity from asingle product skew uh in a
(01:21):
device and that's why we've wonthese really big accounts and
how increasingly we're workingwith operators.
But we can go into that a bitlater on.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Fantastic.
So let's set the scene.
I mean IoT has been aroundlonger than Wi-Fi, longer than
most wireless technologies, andyet it's really coming into
force now.
Why has it taken so long tofinally take off?
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Yeah, you're right, it has.
I mean, I've been in theindustry a while it's not my
first rodeo and I remember I wasat Cisco for 13 years and ended
up as part of the exec team,and I remember, in 2011, we
confidently predicted there'd be20, sorry, 50 billion things
connected by 2020.
And never thinking that I'd beable to comment post 2020 and
(02:05):
look back and see how accuratethat was, we actually got to 11
billion as an industry and soyou know, even before it was
called iot, it was called m2mand you could argue, before that
it was called scada, and youknow we we only got to 20 of
predictions and and that thereinlies the lies, the rub, um, in
that we kind of assumed that itwould be easy, and I think we
(02:27):
had a mental model.
I know we had a mental model inour mind that says, well, we
can do it on a phone.
I mean, I can take my phoneRemember 2007, the iPhone.
I can take my phone abroad andit roams, it works right.
So it's just a device with acircuit and software, and we
thought IoT would be the same.
And, of course, so isn't it?
Just a device with a circuitand software and we thought IoT
(02:50):
would be the same, and of courseit isn't.
And then what we found is that,oh, it's actually.
You know, there's roamingagreements, but only some
roaming agreements.
I mean, in general, the averageconnectivity is 85% globally
and what that means is that ifyou want to create a single
product, manufacture it once andjust send it around the world
(03:11):
and have it connect what we callubiquitous connectivity you're
going to get 85% on average.
And what that means is, let'ssay you're doing a healthcare
use case or whatever, you've got15% of cases where you're not
having connectivity and thenroaming agreements break.
So we've missed, as an industry,we've completely missed
expectations.
(03:31):
We totally underestimated thecomplexity.
We basically my analogy is wesold, you know parts, like
selling parts of a car andassume the customers would
assemble the car themselves acar and assumed the customers
would assemble the carthemselves.
And actually, at the heart ofmy company and the founders who
started it before I joined, thebrilliance of it was that they
(03:53):
designed something which saidthat will never work.
You cannot glue proprietarysystems together and get 100%
connectivity.
So they said we have to build adifferent model, and that was
the genesis of SI, by the way,evan.
Interestingly enough, theseguys the founders.
They created Zigbee.
So you know, we all know, it'sin your remote control, about 5
(04:14):
billion devices.
But that is ubiquitousconnectivity your TV remote.
Should you ever decide totravel with it around the world?
If you ever wanted to do that,it would work on every TV.
Decide to travel with it aroundthe world?
If you ever wanted to do that,it would work on every tv.
Um, you know, zigbee isubiquitous connectivity from a
chip on a board inside a device.
So they basically said whydon't we reinvent cellular and
design a cellular solution thatworks like zigbee?
(04:36):
And uh, essentially we.
That's what we do.
We sell 99, 99% plus globalconnectivity.
You know, 192 countries in theworld.
It's quite a challenge andthat's why we've won those big
brands that I mentioned.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Fantastic.
You've also called this periodwe're in the third wave of tech
disruption.
What does that mean exactly insimpler terms, for business
leaders, tech leaders?
What's?
So unique about the presenttime.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
You know, I have been in the industry for 40 years
and I think you can learn a lotfrom what's happened, because
there's really nothing new.
So I'll talk about the firstand the second ways of
disruption and I'll do it frommy own perspective because it
was there.
I remember when I first joinedCisco.
It was just around the timewhen voice over IP was coming in
(05:31):
as a new technology to replacecircuit switch.
And what people forget whenthey look back is people, a lot
of people were really skepticaloh, it's just tech, it's not.
You know, I'm going to carry onselling circuit switch.
Well, we all know what happened.
The guys who adopted packetswitching leapfrogged and got
the market, took the early leadand the pecking order changed.
(05:53):
And so disruption is isdifficult because you have to do
change management and it'sthreatening.
It threatens your economicmodel.
We call that the first wave ofdisruption for telecom economic
model.
We call that the first wave ofdisruption for telecom.
The second wave, just before Ileft Cisco, was cloud.
I ended up for Cisco runningthe cloud program globally and
(06:15):
it was all about the fact thatthe service providers at the
time they all had hosted datacenter businesses, so large part
of their business.
Um wasn't just selling data uhdata, voice video into consumer
handsets and things like that,but they all they were hosting
enterprises applications on datacenters.
That was big for most telcos.
(06:36):
Well, of course, aws came along, where you know, for ten
dollars a week on your ownpersonal credit card you had
access to a huge compute and allthe developer tools.
That business just collapsed,it was hollowed out and they all
had to scramble and do it.
And so the question thenbecomes okay, you know,
technology enabled disruption.
(06:56):
What's happening now and Ibelieve many people do that
we're now actually seeing thethird wave of disruption in
telecom, which is, as always,these disruptions are enabled by
a new standard, uh and into abetter interoperability.
In the case of iot, it's thee-sim which breaks, breaks the
(07:18):
40-year proprietary lock of thetelecom mz into the sim, so you
can now have multiple operatorsin the sim.
It's the euicc standard whichmakes it an official standard so
everyone can interoperate.
And then there's this new umcapability called sgp32, without
getting too technical about it,but basically gives control to
(07:39):
the user, and the user can say I, you, the, the operator used to
control the switch, chose theroaming agreements, you know
your way or the highway, but Ipress the button, I'm actually
going to go to somewhere else.
So all of that is disruption,and with disruption comes
opportunity.
I believe is a same thing isthat a number of operators are
(08:09):
now seeing this as anopportunity for them to become
global, and a bunch of operatorsare sitting and watching it
wondering is this going toaffect them.
But I absolutely believedisruption is underway and this
is an opportunity, which is oneof the reasons why we aren't
just selling to largeenterprises.
We now.
We are now the platform forAT&T globally.
That was a big announcement wedid in Barcelona.
(08:29):
So AT&T have 135 milliondevices.
So we have become the platformfor AT&T, the white label
platform.
We are doing the platform forTELUS in Canada and we are doing
the platform for MTN across 18countries in Africa.
So we are working withoperators to enable them to take
(08:50):
advantage of this disruption sothey can become global with a
SaaS solution as opposed tobuilding it themselves, which is
their DNA, but all their moneyis going into 5G, so they don't
have any money to build itthemselves.
They don't have the timebecause this disruption comes at
you really quickly.
So, yeah, we're still doingdirect big enterprises, you know
(09:14):
giving you some brands, but nowmost of our activity is white
labeling, like AT&T, and weexpect more to follow.
We're helping the operatorsmanage the disruption so that
they can launch a new service asan off-balance sheet
pay-as-you-use service veryrapidly to take advantage of the
(09:40):
next wave of disruption, whichis a huge opportunity for people
.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Yeah, what a time.
And you mentioned those amazingbrands, those big enterprises.
How are they using connecteddevices and data today?
Compared to just five years ago, for example, what's changed?
Speaker 2 (10:12):
single product SKUs.
So I think one of themisunderstandings about IoT is
that the ROI is at the front end, ie the device.
You can get data out of thedevice and therefore you will
get more marketing data oryou'll sell more devices.
Actually, I don't think that isthe ROI for IoT.
The ROI for IoT is the abilityto make a single product in a
single factory with ubiquitousconnectivity inside it and
(10:32):
deploy it anywhere in the worldand it just works.
So, to give you specificexamples, we do all of Shell's
EV chargers right, and Shellmake them in Vietnam and they
make them once as a sealeddevice.
It's not an open device whereyou insert SIMs.
When it gets to the country,make it once, ship it around the
world, turn it on and it works.
(10:56):
The ROI for only having one lineof EV chargers, for having
simpler manufacturing, simplersupply chain, simpler
installation, simplermaintenance.
One portal, one set of APIs, is100, if not 500 times more
return on investment than thecost of the connectivity,
(11:16):
because remember, data isgetting cheaper and cheaper and
cheaper.
When I joined SI seven yearsago, the cost of a gigabyte of
data was about $11.
The market price for a gigabyteof IoT data now is about $1.60,
right.
So that's about a 25% declineper year.
So the money's not in the dataanymore.
(11:37):
The ROI is that can you savemoney at your backend costs by
manufacturing single SKU?
So, amazon, we do Amazonautomatic door openers for all
the Amazon Prime trucks aroundthe world.
It's a single device that youcan put inside the buzzer of an
apartment block where you getentry.
(11:58):
That will work and they can putit in any door in the world.
I do it in my own podcastcalled IoT Leaders, and one of
the episodes is Amazon.
They talk about owning everydoor in the world.
Amazon don't do small projectsso that the prime driver can
gain secure access and othercompanies like FedEx, ups or
(12:21):
whatever can use it, because youdon't want two devices or three
devices in your door.
So the answer to the questionis people are now making single
global product SKUs which willwork anywhere in the world.
Now, in order to do that, youhave to have a different model
to the classic MNO, mvna, mvnomodel, because it cannot do that
(12:43):
.
The standard MNO model was notbuilt to do ubiquitous global
connectivity, and so that'sreally the heart of why we're
different.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Fantastic.
So you've solved theinteroperability challenge and
you're leveraging all this newtechnology like eSIM.
The other barrierstraditionally have been security
, terrible device security,questions around cloud security,
privacy concerns.
How are you addressing thoseconcerns?
Speaker 2 (13:16):
So maybe I'll answer that, linking to the previous
question.
So one of the differences ourarchitecture is basically it's
kind of similar to the StarAlliance in the airline industry
in that we have a ringarchitecture, not a hub and
spoke, and we have 25 operatorsthat we can localize the
(13:36):
connection OTA so we canactually either roam onto those
25 operators on all of theirroaming agreements so that makes
900 networks or we can localizethe connection OTA so we can
switch a device from AT&T toVerizon in the US and localize,
not just run, and that's reallyimportant, especially for 5G
(13:59):
that gets going.
Now, on security, everything isencrypted and through a private
APN, and I mentioned SGP32earlier.
Some of your listeners, viewers, will be very familiar with
that.
But the idea of switching theoperator yourself, like your
Kindle does or your Apple Watchdoes, the problem is take one
(14:21):
example is yeah, but how do youswitch the APN?
I mean the APN is different byoperator.
If it's fixed IP addresses, theIP address is different.
So what we use is a private APNand fully encrypted data.
We don't store any data.
It's all data in motion, dataat rest, and we use a
(14:45):
public-private key encryption atthe device level to make sure
that you've got auditability,traceability and proof of
provenance of the data, ie it'snot been intercepted from the
device to your cloud portal.
So security and trust isbecoming a really big part of
this.
And using the public internetto get your data, it's very hard
(15:12):
to actually get that trustcomponent.
So that's why we have our ownprivate software defined network
with 20 data centers and we useencrypted APNs across 25
operators.
It's like the Star Alliance.
Buy an airline ticket fromUnitedcom.
You can fly on 34 airlines.
You'll get United points, useUnited lounges and pay once to
(15:36):
United, but you can fly on 34airlines.
That business model which weare now used to but used to be
revolutionary.
That business model is whatwe've built, if you like, for
IoT.
That business model is whatwe've built, if you like, for
IoT.
So AT&T now have a globalsolution called AT's Global Sim
Advance, they call it.
You can buy a global solutionfrom AT&T and it will work
(16:00):
across 25 operators all the wayaround the world either roaming
or localization but it's allsold to you by AT&T.
That's the first time they'veever been able to do that,
because for their entire history, all AT&T have been able to do
is sell you AT&T connectivityand roaming where they have it.
So it's a new model based oncollaboration between operators,
(16:25):
like the Star Alliance, whichis a proven business model, and
there's multiple like Visa, infinancial services.
It's similar.
You have to be abstracted and beagnostic and virtualize your
switch in the cloud to provideubiquitous global connectivity.
That's a lot of big words, butessentially what it means is
(16:46):
that you have to enable anoperator to actually sell
competitors' connectivitythrough their brand and the IoT
industry and the traditionallegacy platforms like Cisco
Jasper that I'm very familiarwith, or Ericsson's platform.
They were never built to dothat.
They don't do what's calledeSIM orchestration.
(17:09):
So this is the disruptive effectis that a few operators I
mentioned three have made themove and they've said I want to
be a global leader like Telus.
Telus aren't even the biggestoperator in Canada right,
they're the second biggest butTelus can sell a single eSIM and
(17:30):
connect a device in 192countries and they do that with
a software platform.
So they've made the leap to thenew world and I think this is
the disruption that's going tobe played out over the next few
years.
It's great for customersbecause you get the single
product SKU and you get the ROIand you get the connectivity.
You don't have to worry aboutit.
(17:50):
It's just ubiquitous, it justworks as we describe it.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
No, that's fantastic and it's a missing piece of the
puzzle.
However, I would say you knowthe telcos carriers.
We love them, but theytraditionally haven't
necessarily been, you know, likea consultative sort of solution
, architecture-led sale.
So if you're an enterprise CEO,cio, starting an IoT journey
(18:19):
maybe you have a hospitalnetwork or fleet or you know who
knows the business how do youadvise them, yeah, to execute on
an IoT strategy, transformationstrategy.
What's the first step thatyou've seen leading to success,
and how can they be successfulin leveraging this technology
(18:39):
from?
Speaker 2 (18:40):
the telco.
Yeah, from the telco.
Yeah, that was the importantbit at the end, because we still
sell direct, but increasinglywe're becoming the Jasper of the
operators In the deal with.
Let's take AT&T in the dealwith AT&T, we are actually, we
(19:00):
work alongside them and empowerthem.
So every prospect that AT&T get, they introduce us to the
prospect, and the reason they dothat is because of what you
just said.
This is not what they're usedto.
I mean, they're used to simpsondata and they're really good at
it 135 million connections,simpson data.
Now you start talking about asolution.
You're talking aboutarchitecture, design.
(19:21):
You're talking about firmwareoptimization in the device,
which no one's ever had to thinkabout.
You're talking about projectmanagement and implementation.
So we augment.
One of our services isn't justthe SaaS platform, but it's the
empowerment channel empowerment,augmenting the operator to lead
them through, to teach them howto fish.
So eventually we're not needed.
(19:45):
I always like to say there'snothing new At Cisco.
When I left 2017, it was a $50billion company, I think, but
you know they did 80% indirectand 20% direct.
But a large part of Cisco'schannel business the 80% was
empowering the channel toactually give solutions and
(20:08):
value so they could move up,could move up the stack.
And when you look at 5g and andyou know they're almost a
billion dollars that thenetworks are now spending on
implementing 5g stacks one ofthe reasons they're doing 5g is
not because it's just another g,it's somebody said to me the
other day it's because and it'snot just because of speed 5g the
(20:29):
way it's architected, and 5g sa, the standalone um.
It's because and it's not justbecause of speed ig the way it's
architected, and 5gsa, thestandalone um.
It gives them an opportunity tocreate, to move up the stack of
value-added services.
You know network slicing, qos,latency, but also a lot more
than that.
Uh, you can actually do devicemanagement as a service, as a
battery management, uh,multi-rat.
(20:49):
The operators all want to beable to move up the stack
because the data price is goingdown and so we're working with
them to help them to be asolution seller so they can
increase their ARPU, becausethey have to because of the data
price decline.
So it isn't just a SaaS buy ourSaaS and good luck.
(21:10):
We're involved in every singleAT&T sale.
We're involved in all the TELUSsales.
We're on with MTN.
I mean we're doing there's 18different opcos across Africa in
MTN, so it's kind of like 18service providers.
So you have to be a solutionscompany in the first place.
(21:32):
It's not just a mvno that doesmulti-mc.
So there is change managementand that's the most difficult
part, which is why it will takemulti-years for this to roll out
.
But the direction I don't thinkis in doubt.
The direction is what we arebetting on the mno's, who today
do 80%, 85% of all connectionsglobally, and we just need to
(21:53):
enable them to do this.
There are some companies whobelieve the M&Os won't make this
transition.
We think no, no, no, they will,because they have the assets,
they have the pipes, they havethe brand, but they just need
some help.
And so it's not just software,it's also empowering them to do
(22:14):
solution selling.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Brilliant, and so you know, oftentimes large
enterprises are the leaders.
Do you think smaller companies,smes or startups can take
advantage of IoT, or is thismore of a big enterprise?
Speaker 2 (22:29):
No, it's not a big enterprise thing and in fact I
mean we have 800 customers as SI, of which, for instance, at&t
is one.
But we were a direct-onlycompany for about 14 years and
(22:49):
the advantage that smallcompanies have is they can move
quickly.
Large companies are like, youknow, the ocean liner.
It takes a long time for them.
Small companies are like thespeedboat.
And the question is the problemwith IoT, the adoption.
You know, we promised 50billion.
We got to 11 billion.
It was because of thecomplexity, the proprietary
components.
You had to build it yourself.
If you can package it in a waythat's frictionless and easy to
(23:12):
absorb and you switch it on,then then small companies can
absolutely take advantage of it.
Let me give you an exampleFixed wireless access.
Most small companies have arouter, as you call it over
there.
Having lived and worked in theUS, I'll use that language.
(23:33):
They have a router, but thatrouter connects to the service
provider, but the serviceprovider can't do 100% domestic
coverage.
So in the US, at&t doesn't havean IoT roaming agreement with
either Verizon or Timo, so it'snot even national coverage,
right, never mind global.
(23:54):
The federation approach, whichis how we describe our model,
solves that.
But if you could take it andit's enabled by the SIM, the
tiny little eSIM 4 millimetersby 4 millimeters chip that's on
the board.
If you put the SIM in therouter and the SIM then connects
to the cloud platform.
Sim in the router, um and thesim then connects to the cloud
(24:16):
platform, the router becomes ahundred percent connectivity.
Um uh device that doesn't needan ethernet cable in um, it's a
standalone device that gives ahundred percent um wireless
access and that's a hugeopportunity for smbs.
And the same concept um is.
You know, if you put the SIM ina device, it could be a tracker
, it could be a medical device,something you wear around your
(24:37):
neck, it could be a watch we doGoogle Watch in Canada If you
put the SIM in the device on theboard.
So you have to delay a bit.
It isn't just plug a plasticSIM in, so you have to put the.
SIM in the device and we helpoptimize the firmware because
we're also a hardware company.
But once you've got that, thenactually you can get products to
(24:59):
market really quick and sellthem globally.
And the people who tend to takeadvantage of that are the
smaller companies.
Typically that's what happens.
It's the smaller companies whoget to market quickly with a new
innovative solution.
That puts pressure on the bigcompanies to react, as we were
saying earlier about theoperators.
So I think for SMBs, solutionslike fixed wireless or the
(25:21):
ability to create a new productwith 100% connectivity and if
you're a US company, say well, Iwon't just sell it in the US,
but I'll sell it in Mexico,maybe Latam, I'll sell it in
Canada and I'll sign up adistributor in Europe, in Asia,
and I just know that I don'thave to worry about who it's
going to connect to.
It's kind of the Zigbee thing.
(25:41):
Right, it's just if we sell,our SLA service level agreement
is 99% plus connectivity andthat's hard to do behind the
scenes.
But if you can do it becauseyou've architected the solution
at least in our case the way wehave then people say, okay,
great, I can concentrate on mybusiness because now I've got
(26:04):
iot the way I've always wantedit, which is how amazon, you
know, talk about Customers, talkabout it on my podcast is that
I actually now can like one lastexample, if I can.
We do Coca-Cola have a brandcalled Costa, which is a big
coffee chain.
It's particularly strong inEurope and in Australia.
We do all the coffee machinesfor Coca-Cola.
(26:27):
So you think about it, you'vewhich, that's a costa and uh, I
think starbucks.
Right, costa coffee coffeemachines are in garages, um and
uh convenience stores all aroundeurope and asia or middle east.
Starbucks are the big 800 poundgorilla.
(26:48):
It takes starbucks about threemonths, if they want to enter
into a new country, to find asite, build the store, train the
staff, fit it out, startselling the first cup of coffee
and then when you walk into thestore, they ask you what your
name is.
You say evan, they write itwith a sharpie on the side of a
cup and you walk out.
At that point they haven't aclue who you are because you
(27:08):
paid.
If you paid with a card, theydon't get the personal data from
the finance company.
Costa have one product SKU whichcontains our technology.
They can put that product SKUin a BP garage, say in Vietnam
I'm going to use Vietnam againthey can put it in the BP garage
in Vietnam, turn it on and thesame day it connects Wow, it
(27:30):
connects the same day, itconnects, wow, it connects the
same day.
So they have business agility.
The garage pays for electricity, the garage has to put the milk
in, the garage has to top upthe coffee and then the garage
just has to send money to Costa.
If the Vietnamese marketdoesn't like Costa coffee, they
switch the machine off and takeit out.
It's one square meter footprintand because you scan your QR
(27:53):
code, you're getting loyaltypoints.
But what they're getting isyour identity, so they know your
coffee buying habits, so theycan send you messages saying
Evan, it's 11 o'clock, youhaven't had your frappuccino yet
, or whatever it is.
So the benefits of singleproduct, sku, business agility,
(28:15):
make it once, deploy it anywhereare very significant.
You know they see it as almostlike a Starbucks killer because
it can take a long time.
But that's why Coca-Cola boughtthem, and so they are deploying
coffee machines all over theworld.
There's a big one in AtlantaAirport, directly opposite of
(28:38):
Starbucks, because people are inthe line at Starbucks.
It's taking a long time,they're rushing for the flight.
The other side of the corridoris the big coffee custom machine
.
It's called a barista bot, butthe point is, this is a new
business model and it enablesthe enterprises to compete with
other enterprises, and it'sbecause they can get to market
(28:59):
quickly, manufacture it once,deploy it quickly and get the
data, and so we see a ton of usecases like this.
But at the heart of it is eSIM,euicc and the ability to create
single global product SKU,which is what we promised in
2011, but we never delivered.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Wow, incredible.
So you're so far ahead of thecurve here.
I almost dare not ask where yousee IT going next, because
you're sort of living in thefuture, I mean how do you stay
ahead of the curve here, asthings will keep evolving
inevitably?
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Well, first of all, I think we're doing a few great
things, but we're not doingeverything great.
Let me just pour a bit of coldwater on that, although the
brands that I said you knowwe're only a small company the
brands that I said do givecredibility to the story In
terms of where it goes.
Next, I think that there is a.
(29:58):
What we've done so far as anindustry is that we've.
We've now seen the dawn ofoperator agnostic connectivity.
I want to let Star Alliance.
I want to fly on any airline.
So there's a thing in themiddle.
It's a tech company actuallycalled Star Alliance.
It's a tech company and a brand.
So we're trying to be the StarAlliance of the global MNOs and
(30:21):
we still sell direct.
Now, cellular is only 13%.
We all get obsessed aboutcellular.
It's only 13% of allconnections.
So satellite as an example, inrural areas where there aren't
towers, satellite is going to bethe dominant model and there's
(30:42):
a lot happening in satellite.
The Costa coffee machines willsay if they're in a BP garage,
if Wi-Fi is available, then usethat.
If not, use cellular.
So what you actually want isthe devices to be multi-RAT
agnostic.
If the device was operatoragnostic and provider of
(31:03):
multi-RAT agnostic and had theintelligence to say to sense it,
so only switch to another RATradio access type.
If signal strength is this andlatency is that, then what you
get is the device chooses theconnectivity.
Historically, historically, westarted off with the industry.
(31:24):
The operator chose theconnectivity because they
control the switch.
So it's my, I'm an operator,you connect to my network with
the sim that's in your deviceand it's either my network or my
roaming agreements.
And then the mvnos came out andsaid well, we're set above that
, we control the switch, whichmay be for two or three
operators.
What's actually happening nowis that you get operator
(31:47):
agnosticity, which is a realword, and you get rat radio
access type choices.
So the intelligence, like itdid in client server I mean we
always say it's new, it's notnew really, client-server.
You have the logic and the datain the three-tier or five-tier
(32:08):
server model, but there wasintelligence in the device.
So we believe that ultimatelythe device is going to choose
the connectivity.
So in 5G, if you want a certainlevel of quality service and a
certain level of network slicing, the device has to say this is
what I need for the use case andthe cloud platform has to say
(32:29):
I'll only switch you to anotherprovider who can provide those
levels of service.
So that's from the device in orthe edge in if, like the
historical model, is from theproviders out.
So where we we see it going isin order to get massive iot
people have been talking aboutthat 500 million devices, any
(32:49):
sensors, satellites a greatexample.
You know you tiny centers thatrun sensors that run off a
couple of aa batteries.
I mean 10 years off a couple ofaa batteries.
It's amazing what people aretalking about.
You know you can print.
You can talking about you canprint a battery and put it on
something and stick it in afield.
In order to get massive IoT,hundreds of billions of devices
(33:14):
you've got to take thesebarriers away, like operator
agnosticity.
You've got take all thepropriety stacks out and you
will need rat.
You know, if cellular, then useit.
If the price is okay, use, use,um, uh, laura.
If not, use cellular, but onlyif this.
So the logic moves to the edge.
(33:35):
We took about 80 ofapplications and data are going
to the edge.
Iot is a great example.
The logic.
Logic goes to the edge and theedge drives the center drives
the switching and that's how youget 500 billion things.
But you'll only get that sort ofadoption if the enterprises say
I make one, deploy everywhere.
(33:58):
And you see, in car companiescar companies want to make.
You know all the car companies,the width of all the cars are
the same because they make oneframe and all the models just
put different top parts.
It's different right?
Common manufacturing, commoncomponents, global distribution
these are the economics ofgrowth in manufacturing and they
(34:20):
need to be applied to IoT.
And if you can create globalsingle SKU and then bring the
price down and the logic down tosoftware in the microcontroller
actually in the device or inthe processor of the device, if
you can put the switch in thereand keep the price down so, for
(34:41):
instance, it can selectsatellite if it's a little
sensor in a wheat field in OhioThen you can actually get
massive IoT, which is what wereally want, as opposed to what
we've got right now, which ispartial IoT.
I think the latest data is 18billion IoT devices at the end
(35:04):
of last year.
It sounds a lot but it isn'tcompared to the potential that's
out there, and so you've got toget frictionless, open,
interoperable capabilities toget the inflection point of
adoption.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Wow, it's quite a mic drop moment.
So I think on that note we havesome food for thought, but
really amazing and interestingwork.
Congratulations, and onwardsand upwards with the third wave.
Congratulations, Nick.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Thanks, evan, good to talk to you.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Likewise, thanks for joining, thanks for listening
and watching everyone Take care.
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