18
Network Software – Energy Management and Control
18.1 Will the Pot Call the Kettle Back?
In January 1999 we wrote a Technology Topic on Device Access Networks, ‘Will the Pot call the Kettle Back? (1). We suggested that the protocols needed to allow devices to discover one another and then have a meaningful conversation were insufficiently standardised to support widespread market adoption. This was identified as a potential problem for Bluetooth enabled devices.
As with many prognostications we were partly right. Agreeing the Bluetooth procedures for device-to-device discovery and device-to-device communication proved to be a Herculean process and work is still ongoing in this area.
In November 2007 we thought it was time for a sequel – Will the Pot Call the Kettle Back? (2).
The original article focused on device-to-device communications in the home. Eight years later the focus had shifted to corporate, specialist and consumer machine-to-machine communication, the machine-to-machine (M2M) triple-play proposition. In 2007 it was estimated that there were ten microcontrollers for every human on the planet with the microcontroller population growing faster over time – a 60 billion unit target market. On that basis the machine-to-machine market represented a high-value high-growth revenue opportunity.
This was, and is, undoubtedly true but five years on our electricity, gas and water meters are generally still read by people, I buy my train ticket from a man in a ticket office ...
