The GSMA is laying the groundwork for mobile operators to connect billions of embedded devices to their networks, without causing ‘signalling storms’ and consequent network crashes.
The Association has set out a new set of device connection efficiency guidelines as well as claiming strong support for its recently announced embedded SIM card (eSIM) program. The main focus of the new rules is to avoid an inefficient IoT deployment that could being down a mobile network, in the same way that Verizon’s and NTT Docomo’s systems were famously collapsed by a storm of signalling from ‘chatty’ smartphones a couple of years ago.
Internet of things (IoT) devices may not generally generate as much data as humans with handsets, but they often poll the network constantly, creating streams of signalling which must be efficiently handled to avoid degraded user experience or worse.
The Connection Efficiency Guidelines note that “the predicted large scale growth of IoT devices and their associated applications will create major challenges for MNOs. One major challenge that must be overcome is the risk caused by the mass deployment of inefficient, insecure or defective IoT devices on the MNO networks. When deployed on a mass scale such devices can cause network signalling traffic to increase exponentially, which impacts network services for all users of the mobile network. In the worst cases the mass deployments of such IoT devices can disable a mobile network completely.”
The companies listed by the GSMA as backing the new guidelines include AT&T, China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, Etisalat, Jasper, 2KT Corporation, Orange, NTT Docomo, Tata Teleservices, Telefonica, Telenor Connexion Sierra Wireless, and VimpelCom.
The GSMA goes on to say that MNOs have faced similar issues in the past, caused by the surge in smartphones on the networks and the inefficiency of many applications, whether installed on devices or the network itself. And the risks will be even higher in the IoT – the group warns that the luxury of relatively firm control over smartphones will not be enjoyed in deployments of ‘things’, and so requires extra attention pre-deployment.
The guidelines note that IoT devices pose a new set of problems for MNOs to overcome. The first such issue is the reduced lifetime of the (U)SIM card in an environment where there are more read/write cycles and constant restarts, which can also impact power consumption.
Issues can be localized, such as cell congestion, or centralized, creating performance and capacity problems in the core network which can then spark wide area network outages. In the case of an outage, the IoT service itself may fail, and in some cases these services may be mission-critical – energy infrastructure communications or mHealth remote early-warning emergency alerts, for instance .
In addition to these risks, the current network infrastructure is built around an assumption of typical usage and loads, and so it is therefore important that “IoT devices using mobile networks adhere to basic principles before they can be safely connected to mobile networks”. This requires a planned and efficient design for device-application to service-platform communications.
Part of the specification requires that devices aggregate and compress data before sending it over the network, and that if data needs to be sent frequently it should be done so using an always-on feature, rather than constantly waking and sleeping both the device and the network – leveraging the MNO’s APIs.
The GSMA also asks that the network monitors failed attempts to communicate and the resulting raised power consumption, which can be used to diagnose network coverage and capacity problems – as well as passed on to the service provider if the problem lies with them and not the MNO.
The GSMA also took the unveiling of the IoT guidelines to announce the success of its recent eSIM specification. According to the GSMA, the following companies have all begun supporting eSIMs: operators AT&T, Etisalat, NTT Docomo, Telefonica and Vodafone; and by the following manufacturers: Gemalto, Giesecke & Devrient, Morpho (Safran), Oberthur Technologies, Sierra Wireless and Telit. Other names that have committed to launch eSIM products and services include Ericsson, Jasper and Telenor Connexion.
eSIM functionality allows over-the-air provisioning and updates, enabling operators to reprogram devices remotely without having to dispatch an engineer to swap out a SIM card. If the whole embedded M2M industry adopted eSIM, it would enjoy 34% higher market growth by 2020 than it does today, generating $8.9bn in connectivity revenues for MNOs and increasing the current 2020 forecast of 479m connections up to 639m, according to a study by Beecham Research.
The research firm’s CEO Robin Duke-Woolley said: “eSIM is targeted primarily at the OEM community to make to make it easier and more streamlined to both build cellular connectivity into their products and to sell them through many more channels to market. It also considerably opens up the second-hand market in cars and other products for continued use of support services by second and subsequent owners.”