Page 72 - SAMENA Trends - September 2019

ARTICLE SAMENA TRENDS

ARTICLE

Regulatory Frameworks for IoT: Opportunities and

Challenges

The imminent launch of 5G services is
also a very important reason behind
the heightened interest in IOT. 5G is

expected to finally, provide the level
of speed, latency and security which
will potentially enable the provision
of services like autonomous vehicles,
smart homes and wearable for various
health and other applications, to name
a few.

ITU defines internet of things as “a global infrastructure
for the information society, enabling advanced services
by interconnecting (physical and virtual) things based
on existing and evolving interoperable information and
communication technologies”. It began with the adoption of
wired M2M technology in “SCADA” (supervisory control and
data acquisition) in utility companies and became wireless
in the 1990s, after the availability of wireless technology
and its inherent advantages. IOT is the next step in the M2M
evolution, which involves, in most cases, IP communication,
Hani Almojel active internet connection and data delivery relayed through a
Executive Officer Regulatory Affairs middle layer, hosted in cloud. Hence, while M2M may refer to
Mobily any isolated device-to-device connectivity, IOT is about larger
scale synergized communication between multiple devices
with different protocols, to achieve complex objectives.
Therefore, while conventional vehicle tracking would be
categorized as M2M, autonomous vehicles would fall under
the IOT services. Technologists have been dreaming about
the futuristic applications of M2M for a long time. However,
the required speed, latency etc. were not possible until now.
This is about to change with the impending launch of 5G
services, in most countries.

72 SEPTEMBER 2019