Creative Connectivity

British Gas – Smart Meters get real

Yesterday’s announcement by British Gas that they are about to deploy 2 million smart gas meters is probably the most important move that the smart energy market has seen. There are two things that make it significant.

The first is the fact that British Gas understands data. Back in 1995 they were the first corporation in the world to roll out GSM data connectivity to all of their service engineers. They’ve kept on quietly pushing the leading edge of technology ever since.

The second is that they are a major player in a market that has been deregulated for many years. They know that they need to persuade customers to stay with them and that those customers have a choice.

Both are skills that are markedly lacking in many of the other trials we have had around the world. If anyone can prove that smart metering will work it’s probably going to be British Gas. In a week where an Associated Press report poured scorn on the security of smart meters, and shortly after the PG&E billing fiasco, the industry needs some good, solid evidence of where smart metering really is. Compared to this deployment, everything else may look like rank amateurism. This will be the one to watch.

Electronic Health Records, Data Integrity, Consumer Apps and Continua.

A few weeks ago I was talking to someone who mentioned the Talisman SOS bracelet that she and her family wore and suggested that people should be encouraged to add basic medical information into their phone. In the UK there have been a number of campaigns to persuade people to add an ICE (In Case of Emergency) number into their list of contacts. Her suggestion was that this could be expanded to include key medical details. Plenty of such phone apps like this already exist, such as My Life Record, Smart-ICE, Hermes and Allscripts Remote. The problem they bring is how much they can be trusted, particularly in an emergency. It’s something that is causing considerable anguish not only within the medical profession, but also within industry groups who are trying to move medical monitoring into the home. It was a hot topic at this week’s Wireless Communications in Healthcare Conference in London.

At the heart of the problem is the integrity of data that goes into a clinical record. Until recently, data was only ever entered by members of the medical profession. The advent of accessible electronic health records means that patients can begin to enter their own data or modify their records. Whilst I believe that’s the way the world has got to move, it raises important issues.

Take the case of Julia…

Smart Energy & Strange Alliances

It’s been an odd month for Smart Energy, or at least for the wireless standards that are tackling connectivity around the home. If you were to go back six months, then, at least in the U.S., the general consensus would have been that ZigBee had the market tied up. It had the only profile with “Smart Energy” in its name and was winning the PR battle hands down.

Within the major working groups, things weren’t quite so clear. NIST, which has been trying to herd the wireless cats into some semblance of order started a more thorough analysis of just what existed, which saw an increased emphasis on other members of the IEEE 802 standards family, bolstering the fortunes of Wi-Fi (in its 802.11 incarnation) and Bluetooth (in its 802.15.1-2005 form). And it made its preferences clear about a need for IP support. But the status quo didn’t seem to shift very much as a result.

Then, last month, Bluetooth emerged from its normal mode of PR silence to announce the formation of a Smart Energy Study Group. The fact that Emerson, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of home HVAC devices was one of the sponsors for the group caused some noticeable shivers in the Smart Energy marketplace.

This week, there were more ripples, when Wi-Fi and ZigBee announced their Alliance of Alliances to jointly provide an in-home solution for Smart Energy. The Twitterati thought it significant, but what was behind it? Is it deadly rivals joining forces against a common enemy, or is there more going on?

Fitbit and Zomm. The return of the Sinclair business model?

There was a time when it was expected that most teenage boys would have a soldering iron. In those days we didn’t buy audio amplifiers or calculators, we built them from kits. And anyone who grew up in the late sixties in the UK will remember the adverts in Wireless World and Practical Wireless for a succession of kits from Sinclair Radionics. (The turbulent history of Sinclair and the resultant founding of ARM is very affectionately covered in a recent BBC drama – Micro Men.) Before he went on to greater things with the Spectrum personal computer and the C5, Clive Sinclair founded his empire with the promise of the most dazzling technology that we could have in the near future.

That bit about the near future was important. Whenever you ordered one of the early products from Sinclair, it never arrived by return of post. The reasons for delays are documented at the Planet Sinclair site and ranged from subcontractors making mirror images of the printed circuit board, through non-delivery of chips to products that were impossible to make. As a result, there was a common perception that Clive cashed our postal orders and cheques to provide the cash flow before he bought the kit parts. I suspect there was no truth in that rumour was true, but it taught us the principle that you had to wait for cool technical things to appear. But Sinclair invariably did a good job of keeping us early techies on-board, happily waiting the promise of things to come.

After a number of years in which we’ve come to expect the instant gratification that is available from the web, whatever our desires, I’m intrigued to see the re-emergence of that principle of having to wait. In particular, the tactics of small start-up companies similar to Sinclair Radionics, who tell everyone what they’re going to make well in advance of delivering it and then try to keep the customer interest level up until they actually deliver. I assume they’re not taking the upfront cash, as today we have Venture Capital to fund their development pains. But they’re playing to the same customer psychology that Sinclair did so well, of promising tastier jam tomorrow.

OneAPI to bind them.

There’s trouble in Mobile Earth. Or so it appeared at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week. Darkness is spreading throughout the networks, as the twin towers of Apple and Android continue to suck application developers into their empires. But help was at hand. Step forward those plucky little hobbits at the GSM Association. Prior to the Conference their ivory burrow had been echoing to the sound of furry feet as they hastily put together the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC) to thwart those twin evils of the cellular world.

ARPU is precious. Brand is even more precious. As without that, you’re just a data pipe. But both are fading. The only thing that consumers appear to value these days is downloadable apps, and lots of them. Last year at MWC, every operator was busy launching their own Apps Store. A year on, the cellular shires have realised fighting alone didn’t work, so they’ve banded together to pit their combined forces against the dark empire.

It’s an odd alliance, and probably one that is doomed to failure.

Fast, Fit and Fertile. Bluetooth low energy spurs innovation.

The potential of Bluetooth low energy was eloquently demonstrated at this week’s ISPOO conference in Germany, when the winners of the first year of the Bluetooth Innovation World Cup awards were announced. The competition has been running for the last year, inviting individuals and companies to submit ideas for new sports and fitness products that will be made possible by the new Bluetooth low energy standard.