Low-Cost IoT Connectivity with Satellites | Wyld Networks’ Alastair Williamson | E194

you are listening to the iot for all media network hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the iot for all podcasts the number one resource and publication for iot i'm your host ryan chacon and on today's episode we have aleister williamson the ceo of wild networks they are a virtual satellite network operator that develops and delivers innovative wireless technology solutions that enable affordable connectivity for internet of things devices and sensors anywhere in the world so we talk a lot about topics related to that we talk about the lack of connectivity that exists in the market key to solving remote connectivity problems benefits of low power iot the future of satellites and a number of other really important and valuable topics kind of associated with those areas of interest one quick thing if you are watching this on youtube be sure to like and subscribe to the channel if you're listening to us on a podcast directory please be sure to subscribe if you haven't already done so truly appreciate it it helps others find the content more easily that we hope you all are really enjoying but before we get into this episode if any of you out there are looking to enter the fast growing and profitable iot market but don't know where to start check out our sponsor leverage leverages iot solutions development platform provides everything you need to create turnkey iot products that you can white label and resell under your own brand to learn more go to iot changes everything dot com that's iot changes everything dot com and without further ado please enjoy this episode of the iot for all podcast welcome alistar to the iot for all podcast thanks for being here this week it's a pleasure ryan how are you i'm doing great how are you very well indeed good good good very excited to have you um and i wanted to kick this off by having you give a quick introduction about yourself to our audience yeah absolutely so my name is aleister williamson and uh i'm the ceo of wild networks and uh just to sort of explain briefly who wild networks are and what we do so we're a virtual satellite network operator focusing on the internet of things so we deliver an end-to-end service to connect sensors or iot sensors that are deployed in the field to deliver that data to satellites and then deliver that data from satellites back down to the customers and obviously our whole concept is about how do we provide 100 global connectivity for the internet of things are there any particular use cases or industries that you are kind of targeted or focused on or is it more of a broad kind of span approach well there is a focus so our main focus is really on that you know 85 of the world's surface where there's no wireless network so there's there's no existing connectivity to the internet and so obviously that sort of points us into pacific verticals such as agriculture transportation maritime um energy utilities all of those markers where they struggle to get access to the internet okay and for our audience out there who's been hearing a good bit about iot as it connects to satellite connectivity tell us a little bit more about kind of how that works what's involved and what the current landscape looks like on that side of things so satellite iot connectivity exists today but it it utilizes uh traditionally sort of uh geostationary um satellites that are sort of 36 000 miles up up there and require expensive terminals to connect to the sensors and consume a huge amount of power and so what we've done is is different we've sort of tried to change the landscape and what we're looking at is how do we provide affordable iot an affordable satellite iot and that's about sort of um looking at how we can connect up to low earth orbiting satellites obviously about sort of 500 to 600 miles up in the sky using lower power connectivity solutions so we've implemented a technology called lorawan which is a low-power technology to basically connect those sensors directly to low-earth orbiting satellites and this takes a huge cost out of the whole deployment and the whole to actually enhance that return of investment for our customers yeah i was actually asking nexus is if you could talk a little bit more about the benefits that are associated with kind of the low power side of things and obviously you know this this does play into certain use cases this is more applicable to than others you've already kind of alluded to um the lack of coverage and this expanding the the the terrestrial network reach and coverage that we have to enable things like agricultural use cases transportation use cases to be more effective but i love it if you talk more kind of about the benefits and kind of the applications there yeah absolutely so so we always talk about affordable satellite uh iot connectivity and um that the affordability is quite key for us so as i said we're using um uh the spectrum we're using to connect to satellites is actually in the ism band which is a a regulated but free-to-use band so that takes the cost out of the equation for the customers but on the low power piece you know it also has an impact on costs but the real concept of delivering a low power satellite iot solution is is really that our devices and all these iot sensors are deployed in rural locations and there to there's no electricity so we're deploying our terminals and modules and sensors in locations where there's no electricity and these devices actually have to go into the ground and stay there for two to five years so the whole concept of low power is very key in demonstrating a working solution and a solution that's going to provide our customers with a tangible benefit and a return on their investment when you're talking with customers and working with these organizations are they coming to you to help kind of solve a problem and build the solution directly with you all and your partners or are they or you do you have more the companies within the iot space who have solutions coming to you for the kind of the connect connectivity and the network side of things how does that relationship usually how's that handled it interesting it comes from both sides actually so you know um we we're engaged with terrestrial uh lore network providers who want to extend their reach um so you know they're gonna they're gonna provide coverage for 15 to the earth's surface and they're looking for partners to come in to actually deliver something that provides them with 100 global connectivity so we're working with the terrestrial laura network providers but also we're getting customers and the end users coming directly to us saying you know wild can you help us with um solving a problem that we have and that problem is lack of connectivity gotcha um and so i know there are when we're talking about laura applications that are already out there without connectivity connecting to the the satellite piece of it are those use cases that are already in existence able to kind of grow and now connect to the satellite piece or is it a completely different kind of process they have to go through to kind of take advantage of that like how does that transition go for people who may already have deployed lower solutions out there but are not connected to the satellite we're a totally hybrid solution so we're not looking at creating another um layer of network connectivity you know our solution will connect to a height to a terrestrial network it's available and if that terrestrial network is not available then our solution will look for the satellites and so it's a total hybrid solution so we're actually really enhancing what the terrestrial network providers can do and ensuring that we're actually creating one seamless network and we're not trying to create a brand new network here so if i have a legacy kind of lore deployment already out in the field am i is it an easy kind of transition to upgrade to be able to be on your network or is that something that is a kind of a totally different process that they'd have to go through no you you can so we provide those customers with a terminal um or an iot module that they could embed into their sensor and that iot module will basically either go to terrestrial or go to satellite if satellites available gotcha okay makes perfect sense uh one of the things you mentioned a second ago was also the affordability side of it so working with the unlicensed spectrum in the ism band it helps with the affordability of of the satellite iot side of things can you explain kind of the other benefits that are really tying into the overall roi to the problems that customers are coming to you to solve so obviously the affordability is one you've talked about the low power benefits and the extending connectivity but are there other components of the roi that this is kind of really hitting at that you've seen be um successful for the organizations you've worked with yeah that's that's really interesting question because we are you know we're coming up um and speaking with customers and they're talking a lot about sustainability you know currently today you know a lot of our customers have sensors out in the field and they're deploying um you know truck rolls to go out there and collect that data and so one of the additional benefits we are bringing to this is sustainability is the fact you're not having to do truck rolls to go and collect data from rural areas and that's you know that does add to the affordability of what we're actually deploying and it does add and help the return on the investment that our customers are looking for and also additionally it is a benefit to our customers in particular when they look at their esg credentials and how they're actually looking at reducing the amount of carbon dioxide they're putting out there right and helping sustain the environment absolutely yeah i've it's been interesting i've had a lot of conversations recently with different guests about sustainability in the iot space connected to batteries connected to energy harvesting different things that are contributing to overall sustainability and as you talk more about it it's it's very applicable to what you have going on i think we're seeing that transition happen a lot more across all areas of iot is improving the sustainability of kind of the iot space yeah absolutely when we look at sustainability we look at it from two perspectives we look at from the perspective of the customer reducing his footprint by deploying remote sensors we also look at the application that we're deploying our solution into it's into agriculture it's looking at how to reduce you know putting sensors out there looking at how to reduce the amount of water that's wasted and i'll give you one statistic that's it's incredible that you know 30 of the world's wastage of water comes from agriculture and you know technology is now being deployed to go and figure out how to optimize the use of water through soil moisture sensors and we've seen sort of use cases where growers have been able to reduce their waste of water by up to about 37 you know most people think about technology and agriculture as being improving the yield of their crop and that that's correct but it's also about how we reduce you know vital resources such as water and so that's the second part of where our sustainability plan comes from fantastic um one of the things actually you just mentioned they were talking about use cases i was actually going to ask you if you had any um live kind of deployments and use cases that you'd be comfortable sharing on here just to kind of show the power of what you've all built and and how this is being used in different industries uh in a little bit more detail now absolutely i i can give you uh sort of three use cases that um we've got sort of in deployment um you know one is in supply chain management and that's all about how do we track containers but not just tracking containers but how do we actually ensure that the perishable goods within containers is maintained so how do we look at we look at temperature humidity to ensure that um goods that are delivered within a container actually arrive in their location in the optimal um in the optimal condition so supply chain management's a real real big use case for us and we formed a consortium with a company called senate in the u.s that's probably the largest terrestrial border network provider in the u.s and by putting our satellite capability together with utah sap we've put a supply chain solution out into the market second use case um i go back to uh soil moisture sensors so we're deploying our technology into soil moisture sensors those sensors have been deployed over you know a wide range of geographies and looking at soil moisture count or water moisture content in fields and optimizing your irrigation and reducing the amount of water wastage at the same time increasing the production of your of your yield and i guess the third one that's pretty strong out there that's that's doing pretty well is in the energy sector and that's looking at preventative maintenance so you know putting sensors into rural locations looking at um corrosion in oil pipes and that's very much about how do we prevent issues from happening and using iot to give our customers insightful information for preventative maintenance absolutely and there's a perfect example and it's it's funny i've had some conversations recently around the supply chain side around the agriculture side prevent maintenance hasn't been a huge topic that i've i've had the opportunity to talk more about but it makes total sense especially in those rural areas and usually when we're talking about it we're talking about it within manufacturing or within factories indoors not necessarily kind of in rural outdoor potential areas where it's just not as much of a realization of how important that connectivity needs to be in order for for that kind of thing to be be available to them yeah absolutely right right i think the preventative maintenance pieces is becoming much more important particularly where you're looking at uh the energy sector and um you're looking at the the cost of downtime um right and also the cost of spillage which is um not just impactful in a dollar if in dollars but it's also impactful in respect to how we're actually managing the environment absolutely absolutely so let me ask you in the use cases you mentioned or kind of just even if you pull them out one level and talk more about supply chain agriculture and the preventative maintenance in in these rural settings what are some of the challenges that you've all seen um in either deployment of these of these solutions or in just the entire process of of making these possible um have there been challenges that may have been unique that you didn't expect just say anything kind of along those lines be interesting to hear yeah i i think um the the the the challenges that um faced have been uh engineering challenges um and that's basically for us being able to sort of develop and deploy the solution which obviously utilizes low-earth orbiting satellites to collect that data right i think you know we we've got to be aware of of what we're doing you know we we're collecting um we're not collecting data on a real-time basis here you know we're collecting small chunks of data that provide our customers with insight so i think we've we've really sort of got to the point where we're overcoming those engineering challenges and um i think that the sort of the business case challenges that they're they're they're easy to overcome you know we can demonstrate that return on investment really really easily and the benefits there but mainly the engineering issues have been the issues that we've had to put a lot of effort in to get ourselves to where we are now and one question i wanted to ask you is um a lot i've seen a lot of new things coming out around kind of the low orbit satellites connected to iot as of recent um yeah it seems like this is still relatively i don't want to say new but it still feels like new in in the iot space specifically as an option to expand connectivity and make more use cases of more viable what challenges of kind of that caused just by being a relatively new option for for the space i mean we talked about the ism band and and you know using that is does that play into any challenges like what other things are you seeing kind of that have just because of where we are in the market and in the stage of growth when it comes to using satellites for iot um what challenges that may have kind of brought i think the the the the biggest challenge and the the the the our rationale for developing what we've developed is to make satellite iot affordable yes uh making it affordable allows our customers to generate a return on investment that allows the proliferation of um our solution to sort of work its way through different sectors and be understood so the the challenges um really have been for us to get an affordable solution and to do that we've looked at the ism band um to reduce the cost of actually paying for the spectrum um that obviously brings huge benefits but also brings challenges and those challenges are how do we mitigate interference so how do we develop an end-to-end solution that's going to ensure an asset ensure that the sla that we're offering to our customers met so those are the challenges that we've we've had to adopt um to get ourselves to a position where we can offer a solution to our customers that's affordable and delivers on their return on investment absolutely and i think you know just the mission you all are on to provide the low power low cost option for satellite connectivity in iot is is an incredible one because of the success we've seen with low power low cost cut the networks here without using the satellite how successful that's been to increase deployment so when you add in that level of of expanded coverage still keep low cost low power i think it's just like the future of what we're able to kind of now imagine it just continues to grow and i think that's a very very fascinating space to be in as the more people i talk to and learn where the problems are and kind of learn what's working what's not it's just connectivity is so important and being able to do it in this manner i think is an incredible thing for the space and i wanted to ask kind of where this goes where to where do we kind of go from here what are the things that you know you see kind of being accomplished the next steps that us we take in order to enable more use cases more adoption bring down the cost even further and make it something that is adopted kind of at a wider scale yeah i think what we're going to see over the next few years is um a lot more satellite operators starting to launch low earth orbiting satellites specifically for iot you know at the moment um the the the when we talk about low earth orbiting satellites most people sort of reference uh spacex or cooper and they're looking at broadband now you know but my my feeling is is relatively simple broadband is fairly prevalent out there but there's definitely a growth mark for a growth market for uh satellite broadband but then again when i look at the internet of things and i look at the billions of devices that we're going to see deployed over the next few years and it's it's really starting now we see the billions of devices are going to be deployed across the world i think the growth market really is in the iot satellite iot space while in the satellite broadband space so i expect to see a lot more satellites going up supporting iot and supporting laura wan i expect to see a lot more operators going up there supporting uh narrowband iot another lpwan technology that the maybe the telecom operators are more you know favor and so i think we're going to see a lot more happening in this space started really last year the year before but the real growth in this market is starting next year and i can give you some some forecasted numbers that they're pretty massive to be honest with you um i was reading mckinsey reports a few days ago and they were pointing to the fact that um whoever can solve this lack of global connectivity for the internet of things is going to unlock a market worth about two to three trillion us dollars in global gdp over the next 10 years so it really is a fairly nascent market but it's a growing market and it's a market that's compatible with the terrestrial um lorawan iot providers in just basically extending their reach i i think that's a very important thing that people need to understand of how powerful that is when you bring those together as opposed to kind of choosing one or the other you know we've been able to use the terrestrial connectivity different options and they're great they provide different use cases they they fit them very well from an ri perspective but that next step is that global coverage and that that opportunity to not be limited by the connectivity piece which oftentimes does limit potential use cases in different areas or different ways and i think this allows the adoption to just be easier for people to to deploy and and bring into their organization and i think anything that any company that has focused on that has a very bright future ahead of them and that's what i think so exciting for us to kind of learn more about um so as we kind of wrap up here the last thing i wanted to do is just ask if our audience has any kind of questions follow-up anything they want to learn more about how they can kind of get in touch and do that you know we we're we're really uh ramping up our sort of um communications out to the market we attending uh multiple trade shows all over the world um we're engaging with multiple customers you know you can go to our website our website's got a lot of information on what we do where we are and how to connect with us so um yeah i i think we're we're we're more than happy to engage with as many people as possible it's a big ecosystem out there it's an ecosystem that um is very relevant to what we're doing and being part of the lorawan alliance also allows us to get in touch with a lot of people and we're getting a lot of input from the law alliance particularly from sensor manufacturers network operators who are really interested in extending their network coverage that's fantastic i i really think that this episode is going to do quite well with our audience um the like we've kind of already alluded to just the power of what you're bringing to the market is super exciting and i think there's gonna be a lot of people that are looking to learn how they can adopt iot in a simpler way a more cost effective way and and connectivity has been uh concerned for some people and i think this allows them to really see that the potential is there for them to achieve the goals they're looking for so um so i really appreciate you taking the time and and jumping in and talking more about this in detail and i look forward to hopefully having you and other members of the team back on other video series that we're doing to talk more about what's going on um in this space because i think it's super relevant it's growing fast and uh it's a very exciting exciting place to be so so we look forward to kind of keeping keeping tabs on what's going on over there and the last thing i want to ask is anything new and exciting kind of coming out from your company in the in the coming months that we should be on the lookout for yeah i think you want to be a lookout for the actual commercial launch of the service which is going to be in the second half of this year so at the moment you know we're doing deals with customers uh seeding our equipment into their networks but the the big um uh event that's happening this year will be the commercial launch of the the satellite iot service at this moment in time we're going through use cases through beta trial and alpha trialing but towards the end of the year you will see some uh huge events and announcements happening from wild nice and are you all going to be at the lore alliance event in paris i'll be the first one at the door so yeah we'll see you there ryan yeah i won't be but another member of our team that handles more of the event relationship stuff with our partners and things like that she's actually going to be traveling over there um to to attend so we're excited yeah that's really good we look forward to meeting up absolutely well thanks so much again for your time alistair this has been a fantastic conversation and look forward to staying in touch and hopefully having you back fantastic you look after yourself ryan you choose all right thank you bye all right everyone thanks again for watching that episode of the iot fall podcast if you enjoyed the episode please click the thumbs up button subscribe to our channel and be sure to hit the bell notification so you get the latest episodes as soon as they become available other than that thanks again for watching and we'll see you next time

2022-06-23 14:18

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