Nonterrestrial network service operator Skylo Technologies continues to seek IoT partnerships, which the company says are integral for reducing the costs of being connected.
Off to a hot start this year after announcing a partnership with Viasat last November, Skylo expects “half a dozen to a dozen” new partnerships by the end of the month that will all follow the 3GPPP release 17 narrowband IoT standard, Tarun Gupta, co-founder and chief product officer at Mountain View, Calif.-based Skylo, tells Connectivity Business News in the latest episode of “The Dish.”
Skylo’s standardized direct-to-smartphone SMS service went live on Jan. 31, after the podcast was recorded.
Standardizing IoT technologies to work without adding network infrastructure doesn’t mean everything’s the same, Gupta tells CBN on the podcast. Instead, interoperability provides the end user with more options.
“Competition, frankly, breeds innovation,” Gupta says. “By having a standards-based approach, [the end user] can have a multi-vendor strategy without having to worry about performance.”
Even in similar markets, not all vendors will have the same supply chain luck so end users need options, he says.
“By adopting standards, you don’t have to worry about where your hardware is coming from or where your connectivity is coming from,” he says. “It just works.”
In November, Gupta told CBN that standardization can bring the cost to connect a device to a satellite network from hundreds of dollars monthly to “pennies per transmission.”
But it’s not just about navigating the supply chain. Gupta tells CBN that standardization enables mobile users on any device to benefit from emergency SOS services, which could prove critical to their safety if they suffer an accident in a cellular dead zone.
“We recognized that there was a big gap because a lot of these accidents occur where their coverage doesn’t exist today in a cost-effective manner,” Gupta says. “Think about when you’re skiing or you’re on the beach or out hiking … where, if somebody falls down or gets lost or gets hurt, you want to make sure that you always have connectivity — that you’re a button or text away from being saved.”
Last October, Skylo and emergency services company FocusPoint International provided dispatch service for a hiker suffering altitude sickness because the hiker was able to push the SOS button on their Motorola phone, Gupta tells CBN.
“We were able to save the hiker’s life,” he says.
Listen as Gupta discusses why standardization is a must in IoT.
