The idea's not new but the excitement level is. Many observers say there's a perfect storm brewing for the concept with commodity-cost components, pervasive connectivity and a general realisation that open standards and open source are the way forward. How true and how soon? Join us to find out.
TelecomTV's next Main Agenda Interactive is called 'Building the Internet of Things'; it's sponsored by Alcatel-Lucent and it's taking place tomorrow (Tuesday, November 22, 2011) at 2.00pm UK time (3.00pm Central Europe, 9.00am US East Coast).
Log in and be part of our virtual studio audience as we go out live with about 40 minutes of panel discussion. You can ask questions, make points and generally be part of the live programme from your desktop. Failing that (and of course we know we're all busy) you can catch the discussion on demand later.
The idea behind the IOT is to build on the development of machine-to-machine (M2M) connectivity by providing a platform to take the data further. In much the same way that the open Internet itself did with the World Wide Web in the 1990s, the Internet of Things will use open standards and (as much as possible) open access to machine information to form an ecosystem of M2M data users who can mash the data (amongst other things) to develop new applications and services.
The essential M2M underpinnings seem to be falling into place.
Connection modules have become commodity items: the cost of mobile or wireless M2M modules, for instance, have dropped from around €50 four years ago to between €10 and €15 today.
As a result (or perhaps that scale is the cause of the price drop) the projected numbers for the global installed base of connected items has soared. Consultants Analysys Mason says the 100m devices currently installed worldwide today will increase to 2.1bn by 2020. That's the sort of scale you need to bring down component costs in a virtuous cycle and the process appears to be well under way.
But in the end it's not so much your connected devices, but what you can do with them, that counts. How do you build an IOT ecosystem, how do you get big corporates and governments to open up their (or should that be our?) 'things' for information gathering. And what about security and privacy (one of the reasons they'll say they can't?).
It's all on the agenda of 'Building the Internet of Things' tomorrow. Be there.
Register here
For more information and panelist info click here.
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