Ushering in the era of mass IoT?

Cisco has added to its internet of things (IoT) portfolio to help its service provider customers offer a simpler way to manage LPWAN/4G/5G IoT connectivity for new and emerging use cases.

As industries look to evolve their digital strategies in support of hybrid work, they need simplified solutions to connect and manage low-cost, often-stationary devices deployed at massive scale (Mass IoT), such as utility meters, medical devices, and agricultural sensors.

Introduced today at Mobile World Congress Barcelona, Cisco IoT Control Center now fulfills industry needs for Mass IoT with a new simplified and secure connectivity management package purpose-built for lower complexity IoT devices. Cisco IoT Control Center manages nearly 200 million devices today, across all licensed cellular networks (LPWAN/4G/5G), giving operators and enterprises the flexibility to choose the network that works best for their use case.

With low bandwidth consumption and predictable usage patterns, stationary devices are often connected over wide areas with 3GPP LPWAN networks. LPWAN supports a broad range of IoT use cases – from a water meter that sends a burst of data once a week, to a city parking meter that handles transactions throughout the day and night. Remote management for these devices is less complex than those requiring continuous, real-time, mission critical data collection such as connected cars.

With its new Cisco IoT Control Center offer, delivered as a subscription service, service providers can now address the full range of enterprise use cases - from low-to-high complexity from a single platform. The new offer reduces connectivity management complexity and costs without compromising quality, making it practical and profitable for service providers to drive new revenue streams and capitalize on new Mass IoT market opportunities.

"We are always looking for ways to make IoT more valuable and easier to use for our customers, and now Cisco enables KPN IoT to profitably capitalize on LPWAN market opportunities via the IoT Control Center," says Carolien Nijhuis, EVP, Internet of Things and Dataservices at KPN. "Offering our enterprise customers a single platform to address the full range of IoT use cases is a great advantage and reduces complexity in our customer's deployments, leverages existing integrations and improves cost efficiency."

"We are very pleased to see the new Mass IoT capabilities available on the IoT Control Center platform,“ says Marc Overton, Managing Director Division X, for BT's Enterprise business. "These will enable the pursuit of emerging low-cost, low-complexity IoT segments, with a solution that better meets customers’ needs."

“We strive to help our service provider customers enable new services and business outcomes for Mass IoT to simplify data collection from millions of devices,” said Masum Mir, Vice President and General Manager, Cable, Mobile and IoT, Cisco. “With these enhancements to Cisco IoT Control Center, our customers can expand into the LPWAN market using a proven platform to help a broad range of growing industries realize what the future of mobile IoT can do to transform their business.”