Classroom Companion: Business

 
Chapter 2 ·
Information and Communication Technologies

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2
2.4 
 Internet of Things
Interactions between humans (e.g., speech and e-mail) and between humans and 
machines (e.g., downloading of films and payment services) are traditionally the 
core elements in the evolution of telecommunications technology comprising net-
work architecture, network management, communication protocols, and services. 
Most telecommunications statistics is still concerned with the number of individ-
uals connected to the Internet and mobile networks, the amount of traffic they 
generate, and the revenues this traffic creates for the telecommunication opera-
tors. This simple picture of telecommunications is now changing. During the last 
decennium, autonomous communication between machines not involving humans 
has become increasingly important. This includes remote sensing and control, 
grid computing, driverless cars, smart homes, smart cities, smart grids, infrastruc-
ture management, and several other applications. IoT devices may report to and 
receive commands from centralized platforms, for example, automatic reading of 
power and freshwater consumption, or interchange message with one another 
without involving a central processing platform, for example, vehicle-to-vehicle 
communication and vehicle-to-road infrastructure communication for autonomic 
driving.
Cisco has estimated that there will be almost 30 billion devices connected to the 
Internet by 2022. About 50% of these devices will be IoT devices and 25% will be 
smartphones (Cisco Annual Internet Report, 
2020
). The remainder will be TVs, 
PCs, and tablets. On the other hand, IoT devices will only generate 6% of the 
global Internet traffic. This is so because most IoT devices transmit few and short 
messages as compared to other users of the Internet. According to Business Insider, 
there are almost three times as many smart devices in people’s homes as shown in 
Cisco’s statistics; however, only a few of them are connected to the Internet. If 
these devices are also connected, then the increase in IoT devices will be dramatic, 
resulting in a tripling of the estimates of Cisco (Patel, 
2018
).
The applications of IoT devices are commonly divided into five categories: con-
sumer, commercial, industrial, infrastructure, and military. Several applications 
exist already, but the number of applications is expected to escalate dramatically 
during the next few years. One consequence is that IP version 6 must be built out 
on a large scale to provide enough addressing space for the new applications. The 
5G mobile network is already designed for this evolution, and it is assumed that 5G 
will play an important role in the evolution of IoT.
Cryptocurrencies, in particular 
Bitcoin, have met much criticism and 
have been compared to economic bub-
bles such as the Tulip Mania in 1637 
and the South Sea Bubble in 1720. 
Cryptocurrencies have also been used 
in money laundering and in funding of 
criminal activities.