Three Ireland has reached a new milestone with more than three million Internet of Things (IoT) connections in Ireland, representing a market share of over 75 per cent. “It’s a great achievement for us,” says Karl McDermott, head of 3Connected Solutions. “It’s not too long ago that we reached the two million mark. In 2023 alone, we provided 600,000 connections in the Irish market to customers in a variety of sectors including manufacturing, agriculture, energy and motoring.”
The benefits of IoT are wide-ranging and the use cases for the technology are growing all the time for businesses of all sizes, says McDermott.
“At Three we encourage customers to challenge us to design tailored IoT solutions to meet their needs,” he adds. “For example, Three has partnered with ESB Networks on the nationwide roll-out of smart meters, with more than 1.8 million meters underpinned by our network installed so far. That’s helping to build a more sustainable Ireland by encouraging more energy efficient living.”
Three Ireland’s IoT solutions also range from providing life-saving connectivity for lifebuoys in Dublin, to ensuring temperature and transit conditions are maintained for important pharmaceutical drugs.
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The smart meter contract is by no means the only area of growth. “Retail, manufacturing, transport and surveillance are all significant growth areas,” says McDermott. “We achieved 24 per cent growth last year; that was up on the previous year. The main growth driver is the increasing range of different solutions that people want to deploy. Wireless networks are now ubiquitous and reliable, and the amount of IoT devices being produced is growing. At the same time, the number of use cases is growing exponentially.”
He outlines a few of those use cases. “For a retailer, it can be a bespoke IoT solution for footfall or for the CCTV system. They might have another to monitor food in fridges, sense the temperature and stock levels and alert them when there is a need to replenish. All of those solutions need connectivity.”
The technology can have a profound impact on businesses. “Take an alarm business, for example,” says McDermott. “If they want to add monitoring to that they can put a SIM into the system. It then becomes a service that generates recurring revenue. That results in a change of business model from just selling things to providing a service. We have moved beyond connectivity to providing solutions and helping our customers to change their business models to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the technology.”
While each IoT solution delivers benefits the real power lies in integration. “You can’t keep putting new applications on different portals – it doesn’t scale,” says McDermott. “You can end up having a number of stand-alone systems all operating separately. We work with our customers to bring those applications on to one platform and give them a single pane of glass to manage all the solutions together. A big part of what we do is working with customers on integrated solutions. We don’t have all the answers, of course, but we bring in other IoT solutions providers to work on the solutions with us.”
[ One of the features of IoT to business is low data and power usage at a low costOpens in new window ]
And it’s not just about technology, McDermott adds: “Another reason for our success is our investment in people and expertise. We have engineers and people who understand the business as well as the technical sides and can design solutions to meet our customers’ needs. Also, our team will know if there is a provider out there to help with specific need.”
That level of expertise has led to Three Ireland becoming the centre of excellence for IoT in the Hutchinson Group. “We have the technical solutions and design expertise for IoT,” says McDermott. “When Three is deploying an IoT solution in Denmark it is our call centre in Limerick that supports it. Having that here in Ireland is very important.”
Three Ireland has other strengths, he continues: “About six or seven years ago we invested in the Sisco Jasper solutions to allow our customers to manage their SIMs. It’s a very high quality platform and having that here along with an international role is very important to us and our customers.”
New technologies such as 5G, low-power-wide-area networks (LPWAN), and narrow band IoT (NBIoT) are driving further growth, McDermott points out. “The IoT space is a really exciting and interesting area,” he says. “There are so many applications out there for it and it’s great to be part of it. These new low-power technologies are very important when you have a solution that needs devices with a battery life of up to 10 years. There are a lot of IoT applications deployed where you don’t have a power source. These include soil monitoring on farms or water quality monitoring in riverbeds.”
Security is of paramount importance. “The more dependent you are on connected devices, the more exposed you are to cyberattack,” he says. “Security is a key part of IoT design. We provide private access point names (APNs) which are gateways between a GSM, GPRS, 3G or 4G mobile network and another computer network. We make sure our customers are not sharing their internet connection with anyone else.”
McDermott is looking forward to further growth in the coming years: “IoT continues to evolve and we continue to invest in products and solutions that are locally developed and supported here in Ireland. We look forward to building on our market leading position to continue to provide end to end IoT solutions to businesses of all sizes across all sectors.”