Ladies and gentlemen, faithful listeners, good morning. Today, Jean-Luc Rognon is asking questions to Bernardo Cabrera, the head of the Objenious BU at Bouygues Telecom, on the theme: “LTE-M and NB-IoT, new technologies that energize IoT applications in supply chain”. Gentlemen, you have the floor.
Jean-Luc Rognon: Good morning, Bernardo.
Bernardo Cabrera: Good morning, Jean-Luc.
Jean-Luc Rognon: You have been the head of the Objenious BU at Bouygues Telecom since 2019. Before that date, Objenious was mainly known as the operator of the ultra-low-power LoRaWAN network, with some significant achievements including in the supply chain, retail, and industry. But for the past three years, the positioning of the Objenious brand seems to have evolved. Could you explain a little?
Bernardo Cabrera: Indeed, today Objenious is Bouygues Telecom’s brand dedicated to the internet of things, I would say regardless of the type of technology. Objenious is a multi-technology IoT connectivity operator. Our motto is to support clients in their IoT projects and technological choices. We are in a process of support, expertise, and also lighting up the ecosystem because when we talk about IoT, we talk about sensors, we talk about modules, we talk about business applications, we talk about the interconnection of innovation systems, and ultimately, at the center of all that, there is connectivity or connectivities. And in terms of this process of expertise and support, we offer a complete portfolio of connectivity technologies: 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G, and we are currently the only operator in France to offer both LTE-M and NB-IoT. Once again, technology is only a means, not an end in itself.
Jean-Luc Rognon: We’re talking about technologies; I imagine we’ll also talk about use cases, particularly in the supply chain. How does this technological neutrality change the game?
Bernardo Cabrera: The fact of offering a diversified and complete portfolio of complementary technologies allows us to meet the challenges of the supply chain and Industry 4.0. When we talk about the supply chain and Industry 4.0, what’s the promise in the end? It’s the promise of a more flexible and interconnected organization, and there is not a single way to interconnect these different use cases to gain productivity and reliability. In the end, we have use cases that are more within the warehouses, within the manufacturing lines, to improve the manufacturing processes, to improve the traceability of parts, and then outside the factory or warehouses, we have challenges more related to the logistics chain, which are related to traceability beyond: improving delivery rates, making equipment receipts more reliable, etc. And so, we see that there is not a single use case but several use cases, and to respond to them, a diversified technology portfolio is needed. The technologies, once again, are only a means, precisely to interconnect all this; in the end, what clients want are different use cases that talk to each other and meet their needs for productivity or reliability.
Jean-Luc Rognon: It’s true that we were used to, well “used to” might not be the right word, the LoRaWAN network of which you are an operator. And now you are talking about new networks, LTE-M, NB-IoT for the Internet of Things. What more do they bring to technologies such as LoRa or Sigfox, known as “LPWAN” technologies?
Bernardo Cabrera: Indeed, Jean-Luc, these are two new technologies or rather, I should say, two new technologies in France. In fact, they are already highly developed, being deployed abroad. As we speak, there are already more than 160 networks in the world using these two types of technology. So what they bring is that, it is the fact of having interoperability that is already there, with several networks around the world, easier deployments everywhere in the world, and what comes with it, i.e., stronger industrialization and ultimately, more significant economies of scale for all ecosystem players, which again range from sensors, modules, business applications, to the interconnection of information systems. They may have different technical characteristics, but in the end, they are very complementary.
Jean-Luc Rognon: But do the two technologies, LTE-M and NB-IoT, rely on 5G networks?
Bernardo Cabrera: In fact, these are technologies that already exist on the 4G network in France and which will also be available in the 5G standard and on the 5G standalone network, which provides this long-term visibility, this longevity, which is an important element of all IoT projects and particularly of the supply chain of factory 4.0 because we are talking about industrial logic with extremely long cycles.
Jean-Luc Rognon: Without getting into too much technical detail, what are the characteristics of these two new standards? If we approach it from a business perspective, which one is better suited to which use case?
Bernardo Cabrera: Reality on the ground is always more subtle, but I will try to respond and categorize these two types of technology while keeping in mind that we offer technologies to develop IoT projects, but ultimately, it is the client who decides. LTE-M will rather meet applications that we could call “real-time or critical-oriented” that will need a bit more throughput, so they will be particularly well adapted to real-time production line information. It will also be suitable for issues outside warehouses and the chain, with almost real-time tracking or potentially on-demand for certain types of assets. NB-IoT is a technology that might have better sensitivity for all issues to penetrate inside buildings, especially when it is compartmentalized, that it’s hard to reach. So it is particularly well oriented for predictive maintenance issues, which might not need to send critical information right now but will be sometimes a little more buried.
Jean-Luc Rognon: Who may not necessarily need a lot of throughput either?
Bernardo Cabrera: And who may not necessarily need a lot of throughput. At least, it’s always a balance between different technical aspects. We’re going to talk about penetration inside buildings, we’re going to talk about throughput… The two technologies have this common characteristic of being very interoperable abroad, so that’s also an important issue for supply chain management and are ultimately complementary. If, for example, the number one expectation is coverage, you can imagine clients, and this is the case, that deploy both NB-IoT and LTE-M because they really aim to have the most precise coverage meter possible.
Jean-Luc Rognon: In practice, how does an IoT project proceed for a client? How long does it take? What are the pitfalls to avoid?
Bernardo Cabrera: When we talk about an IoT project, I think you are well aware, we often talk about POC or testing. I think one of the pitfalls is to focus too much on that aspect. The POC and the test are obviously important parts of the IoT project and can take a more or less significant duration but I think what is important, especially all the work that must be done upstream and the characterization of the project with respect to its need at a given time. Generally, it addresses a very specific challenge, optimizing production chains, improving the pace of production chains, etc., but what we always have to keep in mind at the beginning of a project is the scope, it’s to start looking beyond this potential POC. Will I have issues that arise beyond the warehouse? Will I have international challenges? That’s often the case in supply chain with a very international dimension. Will I need scalability? I can have a need at a given time that’s very technical, but my business challenges can evolve over time. We can imagine this for example in the tire industry. Tire manufacturers were initially asking themselves the question of retrieving technical information from the tire, and we realize that the industry is evolving towards a servitization of the product where they will sell their tire potentially different from the initial use of the tire. Anticipating that is the keystone of IoT projects and eventually we see that when well thought out from the start, the POC and testing part are quite short.
Jean-Luc Rognon: A topical question. We see some French players in IoT either in difficulty, in receivership, or being acquired and some of the explanations put forward are towards the shortage of electronic components, what is your opinion on this?
Bernardo Cabrera: At least in the environment that Bouygues Telecom is facing today, it’s a subject that hasn’t really disrupted the players too much yet. Anyway, the shortage of components is something that transcends all IT and technology sectors of activity. It is true that in the field of IoT, we are often on quite long cycle durations, so today actors have not been confronted with it, they have been able to anticipate these needs quite well, particularly sourcing. The issue, however, with its duration remaining constant over time, may be in front of us; maybe now we are only going to have the first impacts that can be technical for a supply chain, that can be financial. This is something that is rather ahead of us in the field of IoT, unlike what we could notice for example during Covid, where we saw that there was a certain slowdown in any case for new projects while some projects in deployment were accelerated especially at the level of industrial maintenance.
Jean-Luc Rognon: Last question, on the costs. Ultimately, in the Internet of Things, we also say that there will be a decrease in costs over time. Where are we today in terms of cents of euro per tracked object? Euros per sensor? Do you have some orders of magnitude to give us?
Bernardo Cabrera: So you’re right anyway to talk about sensors, tracking, trades, and connectivity, ultimately there are several blocks. You have to imagine that connectivity, in general, is a little less than 10% of the total value of an IoT project, it’s something that’s rather on the decline. Nevertheless, when we talk about asset tracking, it is clear that today the solutions on the market are a few units of euros per month depending on the usage. Because asset tracking is actually quite heterogeneous, we may sometimes rather be on the inventory of certain industrial assets and in some cases on very precise and frequent tracking of the asset, so of course, the prices and services are not exactly the same. We are at a few units of euro today. Sensors so far were still, are still, above a few tens of euros, it’s something that’s rather on the decline and it is certain, once again, that the arrival of technologies, particularly NB-IoT and LTE-M, but I think of NB-IoT with hundreds of millions of sensors that are deployed every quarter in China, that helps precisely this decrease with significant economies of scale which mean that the sensors will probably be below the ten euros or dollars very soon.
Jean-Luc Rognon: Hopefully, the component shortage does not drag on.
Bernardo Cabrera: So the component shortage is a major element, it can play in one direction or the other depending on the actors, but indeed, it may weigh. Today broadly speaking, the decline is still there.
Jean-Luc Rognon: Thank you very much, Bernardo Cabrera.
Bernardo Cabrera: Thank you, Jean-Luc.
Jean-Luc Rognon: See you soon for an upcoming Supply Chain Magazine podcast.