Small, Swift and Successful?

Deutsche Telekom sees start-ups playing a pivotal role in the Mobile Internet of Things

Jens Olejak, Senior IoT Product Manager, Deutsche Telekom

Demand for real-time data and automation is surging across the global economy as all kinds of sectors – from construction to agriculture to public services – go digital. To meet that demand, some of the largest mobile operators are forging partnerships with start-ups innovating with the Mobile Internet of Things (IoT). Dozens of start-ups from across Europe and Israel are working with Deutsche Telekom, for example, to explore potential applications of Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) technology, which enables low power wide area connectivity at low cost.

DT sees these start-ups playing a crucial role in unlocking the full potential of the Mobile IoT. “Start-ups have the agility and efficiency to address a particular niche: They can do things almost overnight,” says Jens Olejak, Senior IoT Product Manager at DT. “In this respect we somehow take an outside-in approach. The future of the corporation will be to have a good core and have a good ecosystem of efficient partners that can monetise particular verticals.”

Tasked with finding and developing innovation by start-ups, hub:raum, Deutsche Telekom’s in-house incubator, has just launched the second wave of a programme to nurture start-ups developing new NB-IoT applications. “There are 9 concrete projects that we are going to work with,” says Jakub Probola, Managing Director of hub:raum.” The start-ups in the second wave include Digitanimal of Spain, which has developed IoT wearables and machine learning algorithms that can help livestock farmers increase their profitability, Istmos of Greece, which enables distributors to track the transport and storage conditions of each individual bottle of wine, and Smart Sense of Croatia, which has developed a small, flexible, modular, affordable and easy-to-deploy air quality monitoring station. “These teams will now continue to work with us on business development and on ideas for pilot projects. What’s more, the prepared use cases will be tested with DT customers,” adds Probola.

The first wave heads to market

In the first wave, hub:raum started with a long list of more than 140 start-ups, before selecting a short list of 24 to participate in the programme. Many of the 16 participants that completed the first wave of the programme are now piloting their applications with DT and its customers, having tested them in DT’s Prototyping Hub, which provides access to live NB-IoT base stations in Bonn, Berlin and Krakow. For example, RadGreen (air quality monitoring), EcoMobile (waste management), Flashnet (lighting) and Mobilis (parking) are all now running pilots with Cosmote, DT’s Greek operating company, while Abaro is running a smart metering pilot with T-Mobile Poland. Flashnet and EcoMobile are also piloting their applications in Bonn, Germany.

“We look at as many different use cases as possible and bring together many different players in the market to bring the ecosystem to life,” explains Pauline Ryba, Programme Lead, NB-IoT Prototyping Hub at DT. “We try to focus on what the customers need – what are the customer problems, but we are also open to new and innovative ideas, such as saving the bees.” hub:raum invested in Beeand.Me, one of the start-ups in the first wave of the hub:raum programme, which has developed a solution that uses NB-IoT to monitor the health of bee hives. “There has been a lot of hype around that solution, which was presented to the Chancellor at CEBIT. But at the beginning of the programme, nobody had the idea of saving bees,” adds Pauline Ryba. Beeand.Me, along with EcoMobile, RadGreen, HereO (smart tracking) and ASN (smart parking), is one of the start-ups being showcased in DT’s Telekom Design Gallery – an Innovation Forum for internal and external stakeholders and customers.

Seeding NB-IoT with start-ups

Some of the start-ups working with DT were encouraged to use NB-IoT by hub:raum. “Start-ups had known that NB-IoT is coming, but there was uncertainty as to how monetise it and the use cases,” explains Jakub Probola. “We are quite well connected in Europe. We knew who is doing what in IoT. As well as running an open call, we approached some start-ups and asked them if they would start doing something together with us in NB-IoT. We offered them access to NB-IoT infrastructure and knowledge. They saw that NB-IoT brought advantages over Sigfox and Lora – battery life, indoor penetration and standardisation, hence foreseeable cost advantages.”

In some cases, hub:raum provided the start-ups in the first wave with external resources to support their development, as well as helping them move towards commercialisation. “They are very keen to work with us,” says Jakub Probola. “It is not easy to get to the market. We can support them in terms of getting to the customers.” hub:raum, which works with both the R&D and the commercial departments of DT, helps the most promising start-ups to partner with appropriate business units within the operator. As T-Mobile US, DT’s US subsidiary, recently announced that it also plans to deploy NB-IoT, the group could potentially deploy the most promising applications across two continents.

DT’s Internet of Things portfolio, which incorporates both NB-IoT and classic cellular M2M solutions, will potentially expand to include LTE-M in future. However, DT’s M2M unit doesn’t offer short-range wireless technologies with gateways or proprietary technologies. “We believe it is better for customers to go for wide-range technologies, which are easier to deploy,” explains Jens Olejak. Indeed, NB-IoT and LTE-M could replace Wi-Fi in some use cases, including smart home applications, because the low power wide area technologies can be easier to configure, control and secure than short-range technologies. “We have many customers and partners who are keen to employ NB-IoT,” says Jens Olejak. “To all of them we offer connectivity, modules and IoT application platforms, while with some we are even working in joint projects to develop NB-IoT-based prototypes.”

To further develop the NB-IoT ecosystem, DT is running workshops with suppliers and customers, including one in Berlin in June and two more in Bonn and Darmstadt in September. In each case, it hosted 100 participants. The Bonn-based operator has also run a hackathon focused on using NB-IoT to develop applications to improve public life and make cities smarter.

Why does DT put so much effort into building an NB-IoT ecosystem? “Our goal is to bridge the makers in the market with the customers, across different industries and different countries,” says Pauline Ryba. “The biggest risk is nothing happening. We need an ideas exchange. We need to bring the ideas of the start-ups together with the technology of suppliers and DT and combine them to meet customers’ needs.