Narrowband Internet of things (NB-IOT) technology was showcased by MTN and Huawei at the AfricaCom 2016 conference in Cape Town to show the practical solutions available.
Smart refrigerator, user-based insurance (UBI) and smart water metering were three of the solutions showcased which are designed to help MTN grow its IOT services to new industry verticals.
Both MTN and Vodacom last week announced plans to roll out NB-IOT networks and solutions in 2017.
NB-IOT is new technology that will extend the utilisation of IOT by making it more efficient to connect objects requiring a long battery life and are located in remote or submerged locations. This low power, wide area technology will connect more objects to the Internet of things as a result of stronger and more penetrative signal.
"We are pleased and excited by the enabling role we are playing to usher an era of enhanced connectivity in Africa through the strategic partnerships we enter into and through the investments we have made in our expansive network infrastructure across the continent," said Alpheus Mangale, chief enterprise business officer for MTN South Africa.
He noted the IOT market is expected to grow exponentially in the next few years, and MTN plans to be at the forefront of this digital revolution.
"We hope to enable how governments, enterprises and industries work."
Huawei's president of cloud core product line, Michael Ma, explained the new solutions are based on its OceanConnect IOT platform and partner ecosystem, as well as NB-IOT wireless technology.
"This enables MTN to develop vertical industry applications for UBI, smart refrigeration for the commercial bottling market, and smart water metering. We look forward to continuing our close relationship with MTN to bring more IOT services to Africa."
The demos
The smart water metering solution enables the automated collection of utility meter data over the cellular network. This will help cut down costs generated from manual meter reading and changing of meter batteries, which are two major cost drivers for conventional metering.
The smart refrigerator solution enables remote monitoring of fridges before outages occur. The solution provides a means to do inventory control, monitoring and cold chain management so that bottlers can ensure only their branded products are stocked in their branded refrigerators. It also helps to improve the sales channel quality control, so the end-product can be served to consumers at the optimal temperature, enabling the bottler to monitor product till point of sales.
The connected car is another hot topic of IOT, and is a major growth area and disruptive innovation in the motor industry. MTN and Huawei have been working together to provide a vehicle UBI solution to SA.
UBI allows insurance companies to have access to a driver's driving information ? including location, driving behaviour and vehicle running status ? and uses big data technology to analyse and score drivers' driving. The insurer can then adjust their offering to be optimised to each driver. Good driving can be rewarded and risky or dangerous driving can be identified.
The strong growth in the IOT market has motivated many analyst firms to create forecasts showing the expected numbers of connections as well as the revenue potential. Generally, the global IOT market is expected to be worth trillions of dollars by 2020, and this will be a promising market with 450 million cellular IOT connections in Africa alone.
MTN and Huawei have signed an IOT frame contract to allow this collaboration to happen at an exponential rate, with both organisations "committing to an all connected Africa". Smart refrigerator, UBI and smart water metering solutions from MTN will act as the beginning of commercially deployed solutions in 2017.
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