IoT News Weekly – June 17, 2022
Brought to you by: IoTSecure
Welcome to the IoT News Weekly, brought to you by IoTSecure.
In this week’s news Finland and South Korea remotely control an entire factory, Insteon smart home is no longer defunct, Comcast is getting into the home security market, Vodaphone is jettisoning it’s IoT Business, Tuya Smart and Indonesia’s Telkom have big plans, and finally today, a new version Ubuntu was released specifically for IoT.
Low-Latency Connections
South Korea and Finland were connected with IoT like never before by a research team at the electronics and telecommunications research institute (ETRI).
The researchers revealed a new technology that allows them to remotely control a factory simultaneously locally and abroad using 5G technology. The technology developed is intended to create a reliable and fast intercontinental network.
The core, and most exciting part, of this demonstration was their ability to successfully transmit data packets over 10,000 kilometers in less than 0.3 seconds. This extremely short delay allowed people more than 10,000 kilometers away from the factory floor to control the IIoT devices with virtually no latency and in real-time.
Insteon Resurrected From the Dead
Insteon, a recently defunct Smart Home Hub maker is back in the news this week after a small group of passionate users managed to acquire the company and reboot the servers. Back in April of 2022 Insteon customers were shocked to find that the company had quietly shut down with no warning.
After some time users discovered that the company had simply run out of money and ceased operations.
Since going dark in April Insteon customers were left with fancy bricks of e-waste that had once been the central hub for their smart home management. The new Insteon CEO, Ken Fairbanks said, “Our first priority was to get the hubs online immediately before we had access to the site, the email service provider, social accounts, etc. Everyday more customers were giving up hope so it was critical to get that restored as soon as possible.”
Insteon smart hub owners should plug their devices back in and keep a close eye out for updates from the new management as they plan to get all the smart and automation technology back online as soon as possible.
Comcast Wants to See More
Notion, a subsidiary of Comcast, launched its professional monitoring service this week. This offshoot of Comcast makes multifunction sensors and software that can be used to monitor homes for break-ins, leaks, and temperature changes, among other things.
Their new professional monitoring service costs $10 per month and adds features such as alerting emergency services, group text messaging alerts, and 24/7 professional monitoring.
This new offering is an attempt to compete with existing home security companies by providing more comprehensive services. Time will tell if it is better or worse than the competition.
Vodafone Ditches IoT Business
European mobile phone giant Vodafone will be spinning off its 900 million euro IoT business. While almost a billion euros a year might sound like a lot of money for a smaller organization Vodafone says that their IoT subsidiary only accounts for about 2% of Vodafone’s service revenues.
The IoT business boasts over 150 million iot connections but compared to the 323 million mobile customers that number is quickly swallowed up.
Vodafone’s plan to spin off the IoT business will help the platform accelerate its growth without the larger looming presence of the parent company and their much stronger numbers. Vodafone did say that the IoT business has grown fast with only about 65 million connected devices in 2018 the growth to more than 150 million devices in 2022 is significant. They are bullish on the future of IoT as well forecasting double digit growth in connected devices by 2025.
Tuya and Telkom Try to Make Indonesians Safer
Tuya Smart, a leading IoT device manufacturer, has partnered with Indonesia’s Telkom to provide Tuya’s Smart home cube system to Telkom’s customers.
Telkom is Indonesia’s largest telecommunication platform and they announced value-added cloud-based services for their use base.
The new service will utilize Tuya’s Cube Solution to provide consumers with a service called IndiHome Smart. They will also be providing a service tier for small and medium sized businesses that is called SooltanCam. Both services will allow users to integrate and control their smart home devices from anywhere using their smartphones.
Ubuntu Goes Tiny for IoT and Embedded Systems
A new version of the Linux Distribution, Ubuntu, called Core 22, was released this week. The latest version of the popular Linux distro is designed specifically for IoT and embedded systems.
The Core 22 Operating system is Canonicals’ latest fully containerized Linux distro that is tuned for embedded systems, robots, raspberry pi boards and other smart device applications.
Canonical made this new version of the Ubuntu OS by honing the operating system down to its bare essentials. Then, by keeping each part of the OS in a separate package called a “snap” the Core 22 OS is able to safely keep both the main kernel and any applications completely sandboxed. It’s also capable of receiving regular automatic updates, and restricting access to secure app stores only, all while automatically scanning for and alerting on vulnerabilities.
Thank you for reading the news today, and don’t forget you can watch the IoT News Weekly every week if you like and subscribe to our channel.
If you would like to learn more about IoTSecure and how we can help you inventory and secure your network, go to IOTSECURE.IO today.
IoT News Description Text:
Thanks for watching the IoT News Weekly below are links to the sources for all the stories discussed in this weeks episode:
