IoT research paper: road to energy savings, ROI goes through telecom operators

Smart City rollouts feature 5-year timeline to CAPEX recoup, potential energy savings equal to 41 million barrels of oil per day

Company Release - 5/2/2017 8:30 AM ET

WILMINGTON, Del., May 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- A new research effort co-sponsored by mobile technology research and development company InterDigital (Nasdaq:IDCC) highlights the potential for enormous energy reduction and cost savings accessible through IoT technology – the equivalent of 41 million barrels of oil per day – but only if short-sighted investment rationales can be overcome and operators provide the interconnectivity required for peak efficiency.

The new research whitepaper by Telecoms.com Intelligence, Smart Cities: what are the opportunities for telcos, highlights the role of telco infrastructure in providing the connectivity necessary to bring about energy reduction through IoT. Despite telcos facing increasing pressure due to heightened competition in the IoT market, the whitepaper points to the unrivalled advantage of operators in delivering the IoT capabilities necessary to properly and seamlessly roll out smart cities, and specifically, smart buildings.

According to statistics from the United Nations Environment Program, residential and commercial buildings consume approximately 60 percent of the world’s electricity. Therefore, there exists an overwhelming opportunity to significantly reduce energy and unnecessary resource consumption through implementing IoT functions as part of future building designs. Indeed, as cited in the whitepaper, recent trials conducted as part of the EU-funded BESOS project concluded that IoT rollouts across buildings and cities have the potential to deliver 30 percent cost reduction by minimizing energy inefficiency, with deployment CAPEX being recouped within 5 years.

The whitepaper also highlights the opportunity for IoT sensors to become part of building standards, similar to wireless technologies of today, such as fiber to the home (FTTH), and deliver unparalleled energy savings.

Despite the predicted benefits of smart cities and buildings, the whitepaper revealed some of the biggest challenges to mass roll out and market adoption:

• Legacy: Connectivity and IoT aspirations can be curtailed due to aging infrastructure that is limited in capabilities.
• Ensuring broadband penetration: Lack of broadband infrastructure prohibits the creation of a smart city environment.
• Short-sighted views on return on investment (ROI): A smart city or smart building project won’t deliver an ROI on a strategy based on one or two-year payback cycles. Instead, it must be a longer-term view over a five to 10-year period.

The whitepaper also indicates the need for a united approach to tackle these challenges and see the realization of the overall potential of smart cities and smart buildings. Research interviews conducted by Telecoms.com revealed that operators are considered to be the connectivity ‘glue’ necessary for the integration of all the necessary players within the industry’s ecosystem. In addition, research suggested that operators are essential to the successful delivery of IoT strategies – particularly in delivering access to core network, OSS/BSS functionality in the backend, and onboarding new customers of IoT services.

“A united approach from building management, municipalities, service providers, and telecoms operators, among others, will be imperative to drive mass market adoption and ultimately change how society operates,” said Jim Nolan, Executive Vice President, IoT Solutions, at InterDigital. “Furthermore, responsible deployment of IoT technology will require the future-proofing and guaranteed interoperability that standards, such as oneM2M™, are designed to drive.”

InterDigital develops wireless technologies for mobile devices, networks, and services. It is a key contributor to global wireless standards, designing and developing a wide range of innovations that are used in digital cellular and wireless products and networks, including IoT, 2G, 3G, 4G and IEEE 802-related products and networks.

In two complementary smart city applications, the oneTRANSPORT™ trial and Smart Routing, InterDigital’s standards-based horizontal IoT platform and integration framework are being used to demonstrate the world’s first open and scalable IoT platform enabling multi-region, multi-modal, and multi-system transport integration across geographies in the United Kingdom. In addition, InterDigital is developing solutions for the smart cities, smart buildings and energy and utilities markets with partners HARMAN and CA Technologies.

The full Telecoms.com whitepaper is available to download here.