Most operators have been pussy footing around niches of the smart building sector but a few have taken a deeper plunge with a more coherent strategy around 5G indoor coverage and IoT infrastructure. Norway’s Telenor has joined the latter camp by setting up a dedicated smart building subsidiary initially to serve its domestic market, before expanding across the Nordics. This is indicative of a gathering push by telcos into the smart building sector as a promising use case for 5G, in some cases drawing together existing threads in specific niches such as energy management and security.
Telenor had prepared the ground for this escalation in smart buildings by aligning its regional and international IoT portfolios under the single brand, Telenor IoT, unveiled in March 2021. This came with a revised operating model around synchronized product development and improved technical support, with a portfolio delivered by IoT specialists focused initially in 18 countries spanning all the continents, that is Africa, the Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe. It has 200 full time IoT staff, with the biggest team naturally in the Nordics to start with, but flexibility to move people between countries in line with customer take-up.
The new smart building subsidiary, called Bldng.ai, then takes off from within that IoT group with the starting ambition of becoming Norway’s largest provider of smart building products and services. It then wants to radiate out across the world through those 18 outlets to meet an anticipated fast-growing market for smart building products and services.
Such interest has been stimulated by bullish predictions whose variance reflects contrasting definitions and the challenge of defining the boundary between smart building and other components relating to enterprise activities, such as facilities management. As a result, we have seen predicted CAGRs over the next five years range from 10% to 35% and estimates of current market size as of early 2021 diverging even more wildly by about sixfold between $15bn and $90bn globally.
Such predictions are virtually useless in themselves but highlight how the field is now being propelled both from within by individual sectors and from without by desire to obtain overall cost savings and operational benefits. The drive for energy savings and compliance with emerging environmental measures is one such factor, increasing security demands another, while a third is growing awareness of air quality issues within working environments amid concerns over the impact of airborne indoor pollutants.
Sensors that monitor indoor air pollutants of various forms have increasingly been installed in workplace or public buildings and integrated in some cases with filtration systems as part of HVAC (Heating Ventilation Air Conditioning).
This is one area that seems to have galvanized by the Covid-19 pandemic, which drew attention to the issue of indoor pollution in the home as people were spending more time there, and on from there to smart buildings. As we have reported before, Honeywell as one of the largest and longest established players in smart building systems in November 2020 introduced a new line of electronic air cleaners including UV systems and incorporating indoor air quality sensors.
Until now, most mobile operators have been in the slipstream of the dedicated smart building system providers such as Honeywell, or those that have entered the field on the back of Internet connectivity more recently, such as Google with its Nest subsidiary targeting the home environment.
We witnessed for example Telefónica teaming up with maker of elevators and lifts Schindler in May 2019 for connectivity and smart management of those systems in public facing commercial premises such as retail department stores, train stations and airports. Telefónica then followed up in October 2019 by launching its Smart Energy Solution promising deeper understanding of energy usage in any building or location, as well as advice on how to reduce consumption.
Some operators have sought to deploy more integrated smart building packages within their own premises, reaching for broader operational savings and benefits while also serving as proving grounds for their technology before commercial launch. Vodafone has been doing this at its UK headquarters in Paddington, London, with the help of a smart building management platform from the South African firm IoT.nxt, in which it had taken a 51% controlling stake in 2019.
This almost inevitably acquired a Covid-19 dimension as Vodafone incorporated IoT.nxt software in May 2020 developed to help enterprise customers enforce social distancing requirements by monitoring the physical office space and provide early warning of over‑crowding. Vodafone indicated this would help tune the offering to help its customers organize their gradual staged return to fuller office-based working as the pandemic hopefully eases.
AT&T is another telco that claims to be enjoying improved financial health after taking its own medicine in the form of its Energy and Building Energy Management Solution (EBMS), which collects information from IoT sensors and BMS (Building Management systems). It then integrates this with other external data relevant for consumption, such as weather information, building portfolio details and utility data and weather details.
AT&T has now deployed EBMS in almost 1000 buildings, monitoring over
40,000 pieces of equipment, including air processors, boilers, chillers, cooling towers, and air handling units, generating around 1.5m data points per day. On average, EBMS has reduced annual energy expense by around 15% where it has been deployed, according to AT&T. This provides a platform for marketing EBMS to enterprise customers.
Some operators have focused on the connectivity upgrades required for effective integrated building management. T-Mobile US has used this as a weapon to bash WiFi and present 5G as the salvation that will deliver the required performance, security and resilience. Its senior manager of engineering business development, Luke Lucas, has argued that while indeed many enterprises have deployed Wi-Fi infrastructure in their facilities, they must introduce cellular coverage as well to provide more even coverage across a site. He cited dependence on the fiber network for backhaul to the building and vulnerability against IoT security threats as particular concerns, especially given constraints imposed by environmental legislation.
“Unfortunately, new energy-efficient buildings that are great in conserving resources like power and water are absolutely terrible for general connectivity….in some ways, buildings are almost too good at keeping the outside signal outside,” Lucas wrote in a blog. “Green buildings that are Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certified are usually bad at bringing signals in.”
T-Mobile aims to cash in through its Build Your Own Coverage program to educate building owners and enterprises on how to improve on-site connectivity and capacity for smarter operation. This, it says, should stimulate partnerships between real estate developers, landlords, tenants, property managers and other parties involved in facilities management, to ensure that wireless technology is included in building planning from the outset.
At a country level at least, South Korea looks the most advanced in smart building planning among operators, with the three leading MNOs all involved. KT is perhaps most advanced, partly as a result of having launched its own real property development unit called KT Estate in 2010 to redevelop old telephone exchanges that had become redundant, providing an incentive and proving ground for smart building technology. Admittedly, KT Estate itself has not been a roaring success, with revenues slumping almost 15% in the last financial year, but there are hopes the deployment of smart building technology can help revive fortunes.
To this end, KT has been developing a suite of smart building services alongside KT Estate, initially comprising two separate but integrated packages, Smart Building Sensing and Smart Building BEMS (building energy management system).
“KT’s smart building service ensures safe and convenient building management at low costs,” said Moon Sunguk, head of KT’s enterprise new business development unit. “We will continue to expand our product lines with AI technology to provide an integrated building management solution.”
KT’s smart building systems monitors boilers, water tanks, motors and other operational facilities, sounding alerts in real time to breakdowns, glitches and other malfunctions. The company’s IoT control feeds into this through remote monitoring.
Then the BEMS package deals with property development, incorporating real time energy management and operational consulting service for building owners and constructors. This has a compliance angle, since applicants for building permits must submit an energy-saving plan including a BEMS that monitors and controls a building’s energy needs. Proof that the BEMS meets regulations must be shown before the building can be commissioned.
Rival SK Telecom is focusing more heavily on the underlying in-building wireless technology and is promoting 5G through its 5GX In-building Solution, employing components doubling the speed of 5G data transfer inside buildings and effectively dispersing the traffic to reduce risk of overload on base stations in crowded areas such as stations and shopping malls.
In a similar vein but focusing on different targets, LG Uplus has been deploying repeaters in smaller enterprise buildings and sites such as underground parking lots to expand 5G coverage there.