China Telecom adds a "new engine" to the IoT industry. How can technology and ecology become the driving force behind the wheels?

Indeed, in recent years, with the increasing support of domestic IoT policies, fruitful application results in key industries, and the continuous gathering and prosperity of all parties in the industrial ecology, the Internet of Things, where everything is connected, is experiencing rapid development. For the market, it is also another opportunity to reshape the pattern and create miracles.

At the World Internet of Things Expo in September this year, the "2018-2019 China Internet of Things Development Annual Report" released by China Economic Information Service showed that the scale of China's Internet of Things industry exceeded 1.2 trillion yuan in 2018, and Internet of Things business increased by 72.9% over the previous year. There were more than 120 key enterprises with an output value of more than 1 billion yuan.

However, while there are opportunities, there are also challenges. Just like the captain of the above-mentioned team, an IoT company, especially a startup, must find two platforms if it wants to compete in this blue ocean. The first is the technology platform, and the second is the ecological platform.

IDC has done a report on the end-user perception and application of IoT in Chinese enterprises. The report shows that Chinese enterprises attach significantly more importance to IoT platforms than the rest of the world. This is not only because IoT platforms are the core technology in the development and commercialization of IoT applications, but also because the continuous evolution of IoT platforms will provide a more convenient and low-cost development environment for application developers, teams and enterprises.

At present, the IoT platform has evolved from the large-scale expansion stage to the refined operation stage. Large IoT platforms have gradually evolved from infrastructure to capability platforms. With applications as the core, it has become a trend to continuously improve the platform's own device management, connection management, application enablement, data analysis, network security and other capabilities. Let's take the latest upgraded "China Telecom IoT Open Platform 3.0" as an example to explore what kind of IoT platform can meet the future IoT market.

Satisfy massive access and terminal scale concurrency

According to IoT Analytics data, the number of connected devices worldwide exceeded 17 billion in 2018, and the number of active IoT devices worldwide reached 7 billion. It is expected that by 2020, the number of active IoT devices will increase to 10 billion, and by 2025, this number will double to 22 billion.

Faced with the increasing number of connected devices, the IoT platform must be able to meet the massive access capabilities and large-scale terminal concurrency. In terms of terminal access, China Telecom's IoT open platform solves the problem of network heterogeneity and realizes the access of multiple protocol devices. The platform supports MQTT, LWM2M, HTTP, TCP, JT/T808 and Telecom's own protocol T-Link . In terms of access methods , it realizes access to different network channels such as WIFI, cellular network, NB-IoT and Ethernet.

Simplify and facilitate user development

Although the IoT platform market has formed a stable market structure, the market environment is still developing dynamically. As we all know, the convergence of IoT platforms is the biggest feature of the early stage of platform development, but it is also during this period that if the platform can form its own advantages, it will have a huge advantage in the market. For example, IoT platform manufacturers are transforming from pure software services to providing "software-hardware" integrated services so that users can better connect with the platform.

Taking China Telecom's IoT platform as an example, China Telecom's packaging platform and Tianyi hardware development board and other hardware middleware facilitate users to quickly access IoT devices to the application enabling (AEP) platform, facilitate management, and also support user customized development. China Telecom's IoT open platform 3.0 also provides the latest "object model creation tool" to help users quickly map IoT terminals to the object model of the open platform. After the object model is successfully established on the open platform, it can also be upgraded to a standard object model as a standard instance of a certain type of terminal on the open platform. At present, the platform has launched more than 50 standard object models such as smart smoke sensors, smart street lights, and smart parking. In addition, China Telecom has also updated the NB-IoT access gateway and launched two entry-level development boards (NB StartKit and WIFI StartKit development boards). The new NB-IoT access gateway 2.0 will support basic, standard and advanced versions.

Safety is the top priority

Security is a rigid standard for whether each generation of information technology can continue to contribute value to human production. In 2018, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Internet of Things Security White Paper", which gave a detailed explanation of the current security status, protection strategies and development directions of the Internet of Things. At this year's two sessions, NPC deputies once again proposed to improve the regulatory system and protect user privacy, and voiced their opinions on the security issues of the Internet of Things. From this perspective, security has become one of the decisive factors affecting whether the Internet of Things can develop on a large scale in the future.

The security upgrade of China Telecom's IoT platform 3.0 can be regarded as a model of following the market and policies. It has formed a unique security system in security authentication and secure transmission, and can provide mainstream national secret algorithms such as SM1, SM2, SM3, SM4, and SM9, and the platform has passed the trusted cloud certification. For example, in terms of security authentication, China Telecom, with its unique advantages as an operator, launched a SIM card-based IoT terminal trusted identity authentication service (SimID) . Cryptographic operations and key storage are completed in a secure SIM card, which is suitable for small and lightweight IoT application scenarios with terminal transformation. In terms of secure transmission, the AEP platform provides TLS and DTLS encrypted channels, which can automatically perform key management, data encryption, data integrity protection, and message authentication to ensure the security of the data transmission process between terminals.

Meeting the trend of “integration of things and cloud”

The integration of the Internet of Things and cloud computing is the most important trend in the development of the Internet of Things platform. As we all know, the greatest value of the Internet of Things comes from "data crude oil". By collecting and transmitting data through the Internet of Things and refining the "data crude oil" in layers through cloud computing, artificial intelligence and other technologies, the maximum value of data can be released.

China Telecom's advantage lies in the ability connection between "Tianyi Cloud" and "China Telecom Internet of Things Development Platform". In 2012, China Telecom officially launched the "Tianyi Cloud" cloud service. Relying on two super large resource pools in China and China Telecom's IDC and network resources in 31 provinces across the country, it became the first cloud service provider in China to achieve "one province, one pool", and its market share ranks among the top three in the country. Based on Tianyi Cloud, 12 cloud services such as cloud hosts and containers can be provided through the Internet of Things open platform to meet the one-stop integration of things and cloud services for Internet of Things customers.

It can be said that only better technology iteration can keep up with the pace of the market and provide IoT product developers with the most cutting-edge technology and the technology that best meets market trends. Just like the relationship between a flowerpot and a flower, the beauty of the two requires the perfect complement to each other.

Of course, in addition to the carrying capacity provided by the "back garden" of the technology platform, the growth of flowers also depends on the quality of the soil. The size of the garden determines how much fertile soil it can hold. Similarly, the flowers cultivated by the fertile soil will determine whether the garden can prosper and splendid. This is a virtuous cycle. In the IoT ecosystem, it is the relationship between the technology platform, the industrial ecosystem and the IoT developers.

The main reason why IoT applications cannot be commercialized on a large scale is ultimately due to the pressure of development difficulty and cost. This mainly comes from two aspects: one is the support of the technical ecology; the other is the support of the industrial ecology. In terms of technology, it must meet the requirements of high quality and low cost. In terms of ecology, it must meet the consensus of the upstream and downstream industries, and form a good cycle-promoting relationship between capital and technology.

In terms of technology ecology, in addition to China Telecom's IoT Open Platform 3.0, China Telecom, as a telecommunications operator, has also formed unique advantages in "cloud network" around the platform.

• In terms of network, it has the world's largest NB-IoT high-quality network, as well as LTE Cat1, LTE-A, 4G and other IoT private networks including the 800M golden frequency band. With the official commercialization of 5G this year, the 5G network will greatly promote the prosperity of IoT technology.

• In terms of platform, the upgraded platform capabilities enable users to master platform development methods within one day and achieve terminal docking to application deployment within one week, greatly simplifying the development and deployment process and reducing costs.

• In terms of operating systems, China Telecom has launched "Tianyi OS", an operating system suitable for lightweight IoT terminals. It has a pre-installed open platform access SDK, which can be seamlessly connected to the open platform. It will gradually embed various terminal capability components of the open platform, effectively reducing developers' development costs and shortening development cycles.

In terms of industrial ecology, the most common and effective practice in the industry is to hold developer competitions to attract IoT-related innovation and entrepreneurship groups to enrich their own ecology, while giving a group of start-ups the opportunity to absorb nutrients from the "fertile ecological soil" and thrive.

To this end, China Telecom held the first "Tianyi IoT Developer" competition last year. The first competition lasted for 8 months, with five major competition areas covering the whole country, attracting the attention of more than 1,000 IoT companies, more than 200 companies and teams signed up for the competition, and finally 12 company teams stood out and stood on the stage of the finals. Hangzhou Tuoshen Technology Co., Ltd. defeated all the competitors and won the championship.

This year, in order to better empower the industry with China Telecom's high-quality IoT resources and huge government and enterprise customer base, cultivate a good IoT industry ecosystem, and enrich China's IoT product market, China Telecom is holding the second "E-Surfing IoT Developer" competition with the theme of "Intelligently Connecting Everything, Empowering the Future", and has comprehensively upgraded all aspects such as event scale, event organization, competition dissemination, and competition rights.

Compared with the first competition, this year's competition will be themed "5G" and will focus on three tracks: "industry applications, creative design, and professional products". In addition, colleges and universities and maker groups will be added to the supporting teams. In order to support the participating teams to better enjoy China Telecom's IoT resources and lower the development threshold, China Telecom has specially upgraded the China Telecom IoT Open Platform 3.0, looking for "wing talents" to show their talents through the open platform, explore valuable IoT product solutions, enrich and develop a strong partner pool, and also support a group of IoT startups with innovation, vitality and cohesion to jointly promote the development of the Internet of Things.

During the competition, participating companies and teams will enjoy China Telecom's IoT open platform capabilities, IoT cards, Tianyi Cloud resources, development kits and laboratory resources.

Based on the first competition, the winning team will receive a million-dollar resource package, a tens-billion-level industrial investment fund investment opportunity, and a tens-million-level media exposure opportunity. At the same time, they will join China Telecom's CTWing Certified Partner Preferred Program, and outstanding projects can be selected into China Telecom's IoT product solution library to obtain telecom cooperation and promotion opportunities. Currently, China Telecom has the largest government and enterprise customer base in the industry, with front-line marketing teams and high-quality investment channels covering more than 30 provinces across the country, which can quickly help enterprises "grow".

In addition, at the technical salon held at the same time as the competition, industry chain technology experts will provide on-site guidance and share cutting-edge technologies, allowing participating teams to quickly grasp market trends and tap into the value of the Internet of Things.