3GPP, the world’s global standards-setting organisation for cellular wireless, has been adding IoT-centric features, including capabilities to avoid network congestion, use networks more effectively, enhance security and, crucially, enable IoT devices to manage power resources efficiently. oneM2M’s Release 3 will look to enable seamless interworking with these underlying 3GPP network services, in particular NB-IoT and LTE-M, via the 3GPP Service Capability Exposure Function (SCEF). According to oneM2M, The combination of its service layer and 3GPP’s underlying network represent a significant move forward for operators in deploying IoT capabilities.
The growing momentum behind LPWAN solutions, including NB-IoT and LTE-M, is expected to fuel large volumes of low price-point connected devices, says oneM2M. Their commercial success will depend on efficient approaches for gathering and sharing IoT data, both at scale and across heterogeneous device populations. By enabling interworking with LPWAN technologies from 3GPP, Release 3 further supports operators in deploying cellular IoT services and tapping into new revenue opportunities higher up the value chain.
“The ultimate goal of oneM2M is to open up the IoT ecosystem and improve the business case for players looking to launch services,” said Omar Elloumi, of Nokia, Technical Plenary Chair at oneM2M. “Release 3 does exactly this by creating an abstraction layer that simplifies the exchange of cross-silo data. Furthermore, by supporting a set of 3GPP-defined APIs, Release 3 opens up new revenue streams for mobile operators while lowering the cost of deployments.”
The announcement comes as the results of one of the largest operator surveys in the area of IoT were released by Mobile World Live, the media arm of the leading wireless industry association, the GSMA. Those results showed that operators worldwide consider cellular technology to be key to their IoT offerings. The survey also showed that 92% of respondents consider fragmentation of standards to be an issue of concern in IoT deployment.
Some examples of cellular IoT value add services enabled by oneM2M’s Release 3 include:
- IoT device enrolment – provides cellular IoT devices connected to an operator’s network with proper security credentials, authentication and registration.
- IoT device location tracking – supports current location tracking, stores past device locations and generates notifications to IoT apps.
- Manage data delivery methods – manages data delivery based on schedule and priority of requests.
- Network communication pattern configuration – helps operators proactively manage network resources by anticipating the communication patterns of IoT devices based on input from IoT apps.
- Wake a sleeping device – monitors if a device is sleeping and wakes it up to process a request from the app if needed
“These features open up a multitude of possibilities for the IoT industry and cellular ecosystem, including how to monetise NB-IoT and LTE-M,” said Elloumi. “A standardised approach at the IoT service layer helps application proliferation through removing the burden of understanding diverse LPWAN flavours.”