Last updated: A new wireless registry for 50 billion things

A new wireless registry for 50 billion things

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When Cisco’s CEO, John Chambers, took the stage at CES in Vegas this year and announced that there was a difference between The Internet of Things (IOT) and the Internet of Everything (IOE), many cried “semantics.” But there is a difference and one that ripped across the US to the National Retailer Federation (NRF) Big Show at the Javits Centre in New York.

IOT, according to Chambers, is made up of billions of connected objects; however, IOE are the smart networks that are required to support all the data these objects generate and transmit. What will help move the IOT into the IOE and drive what Chambers predicts to be a $19 trillion in new revenue by 2020?

IOE requires a universal solution to tie the billions of sensor data into an intelligent device and system agnostic solution.

To our detriment, we are so focused on the idea of a hardware (IOT) solving all our problems that we neglected that simple insight that all these hardware solutions require a method of managing the people and service behind them.

The industry needs a wireless domain (DNS) naming solution that can provide profile, tools and privacy controls to enterprise and the consumer.

When I was invited to sit on a panel at the launch of the new wireless registry (www.wirelessregistry.com) at the NRF show and I realized that this registry could be the silver-bullet platform.

50 Billion Things

When Cisco, Qualcomm, IBM and other set up shop at NRF to talk retail, the IOT verse IOE discussion continued. Brand agencies such as Ogilvy were pitching a solution using Qualcomm’s wireless Gimbel platform to solve retail engagement in the store. Qualcomm’s Gimbel platform is essentially an IOE riding on Apple’s IOT’s iBeacons? Mobile Location Analytics (MLAs) companies that collect consumer behavioural analytics, are a big data IOE play riding on the IOT emitting from the phone and anchored to its MAC address

There are a proliferation of IOE solutions using different technology that require different CAPEX and resources.

Presently there are an estimated 10 billion sensors globally. This is predicted to grow to 50 billion sensors by 2020. Imagine the wireless noise we can anticipate as we move from city to city, street to street, aisle to aisle.

There are barriers everywhere:

On the consumer side we have option paralysis but more importantly simple human inertia.
On the retailer and brand side we have incumbent investments and IT budgets to navigate.
On top of all this stasis we have the DC beltway privacy folk crying “do-not-track”.
How will the consumer navigate this noise? How will the retailer, brand, entertainment provider select from the exploding list of vendors selling various solutions using LTE identification, WiFi MAC identification, Bluetooth MAC, IMEI, etc.

My Wireless Name

The phone in 2014 is becoming less of a Cracker Jack container that acts as a repository of millions of sundry apps, and more of an intelligent device that performs as a server that can manage our world through smart profiling and APIs.

Think about it. We have been hoodwinked by the OEMs to believe that an application store tethered to a phone can deliver any service, entertainment, widget. The app store was a marketplace to the world: clocks, measuring tapes, cash registers, coupon dispensers, shopping lists, ad infinitum.

Google’s acquisition of Nest is good example of the changing landscape where the app will live in the IOT and the device will simply be the profile and the auto-controller. The 94Fifty smart basketball, the Sensible Baby smart sensor monitor, the remote Vibeasy vibrator: all use the phone as the remote control manager.

A service such as The Wireless Registry can offer a naming protocol that can work agnostically with all the in-market sensor solutions and offer a central repository for a retailer, brand, and entertainment provider’s identity. Any existing wireless signal (SSID) that a coffee shop or a big-box retail transmits can now have a name (Starbucks, GAP, Walmart) with an accompanying sophisticated profile. A consumer that has a phone, tablet and PC can now attach a personal name and wireless profile to their MAC addresses.

When the retail and consumer wireless signals bump in the proximal world, the consumer profile can do a simple look up can see what offers, services, commerce is available to them based on their specific identity. The consumer can also block unwanted solicitation answering Jules Polonetsky and the Privacy Commission’s concerns around “do-not-track”.

Now the consumer is in full control of their identity and the phone becomes an intelligent server interacting with the world of wireless signals based on that consumer preferences.

While this solution can interface with existing apps on the phone, ultimately the profile and preferences can be baked into the OS as part of the devices DNA.

Until later. Yours truly from my MAC address aka “MOBILEGUY”

This post originally appeared on The Impulse Economy and is republished here with permission.

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