Over the last few years, an array of international firms have pledged to give the IoT market a much-need boost by attempting to fix what has been wrong with it. That has been no small task, as there has proven to be a long list of challenges–too much cost, too much complexity, and too much time to manage, along with too little security, interoperability, and flexibility.
Entering 2023, the fight continues on all these fronts but German IoT company connectivity and roaming provider 1NCE, which has been doing its part in recent years to reduce costs and expand availability, is now set to tackle complexity challenges.
At CES 2023 last week in Las Vegas, 1NCE announced the launch of a new software business, along with the 1NCE OS platform, which the company says will ease many of the activation and management challenges around large IoT deployments by offering features such as simpler device authentication, managed protocol integration and translation, device monitoring, and more.
The 1NCE OS effort builds on what the company has done to reduce IoT service costs and expand availability and flexibility through offerings like its $10 for 10 years flat-rate service.
1NCE COO Ivo Rook told Fierce Electronics that about half of IoT projects fail after the pilot stage, but the reasons are usually clear.
“We believe the IoT market hasn't delivered up to its promise because it was too expensive to connect anything, and the software for IoT is too complicated,” he said. “We already offer to connect an IoT device anywhere in the world for $10 for 10 years. We’re now going to take the battle to the IoT software world… with a set of software tools that utilize all the data that we see on the IoT network and help our customers to better manage their devices better and their cloud integrations.”
But, Rook stressed that 1NCE is not monetizing that data itself to sell more services. “There is too much monetizing of data by everyone in the ecosystem,” he said. “We are saying that the data belongs to the customer. We are trying to be hungry, not greedy.”
Features of 1NCE OS include:
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Device Authentication: The process of setting up a secure and automated solution usually requires a complicated and error-prone onboarding process. 1NCE OS makes it simple: customers just solder the secure SIM into their device just like any other hardware piece and that’s it – delivering better authentication and integration of uniquely identified devices into IoT projects.
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IoT Integrator: Reliably connecting devices to the cloud can be complex, but 1NCE’s managed protocol translation uses open industry standards (UDP, CoAP, LwM2M, AWS IoT Core, Webhooks) to give customers the free and full flexibility they demand.
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Device Inspector: The time-intensive and costly process of sending technicians into the field to monitor and service devices is significantly reduced using advanced remote access to device states and recent telemetry.
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Device Locator: Network based positioning helps users locate devices even without GPS.
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Energy Saver: The inherent challenges of battery-powered devices make power usage a high priority, and 1NCE’s optimized payload transmission can increase battery life by up to 50 percent.
Fredrik Stålbrand of Berg Insights said in a statement offered up by 1NCE, that the company is making a compelling argument: The statement read in part, “Our view is that the IoT connectivity market will increasingly move towards digitalized sales and delivery. SIMs will be pre-installed in chipsets, while connectivity management is increasingly being controlled by SaaS applications. Customers expect simple, digital experiences throughout the product lifecycle.”