Interested in connecting with Henrik or Anders?

About Onomondo: Onomondo is a global cellular operator for the Internet of Things. Headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark, Onomondo is available in more than 180 countries with full integration to over 700 local operators. Onomondo empowers its network users through its innovative connectivity software, such as real-time monitoring and debugging, cloud connectors, APIs, webhooks, and an easy-to-use management platform. The entire Onomondo team is committed to changing the IoT connectivity landscape for the better. One world. One network. 

Key Questions and Topics from this Episode:

(00:55) Introduction to Henrik and Anders

(02:19) Introduction to Onomondo

(07:29) What use cases has Onomondo been involved with?

(09:14) What have been some of the biggest challenges of bringing Onomondo’s offerings to market?

(13:57) How do you tailor your approach for different companies, applications, and use cases?

(16:51) How do customers find you/how does that relationship start?

(19:08) What does the current cellular IoT landscape look like?

(25:53) What do you think about the lack of transparency in the industry?

Transcript:

- [Voiceover] You are listening to the IoT For All Media Network.

- [Ryan] Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the IoT For All podcast on the IoT For All Media Network. I'm your host, Ryan Chacon, one of the co-creators of IoT For All. Now, before we jump into this episode, please don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, or join our newsletter at IoTforall.com/newsletter to catch all the newest episodes as soon as they come out. Before we get started, if any of you out there are looking to enter the fast growing and profitable IoT market, but don't know where to start, check out our sponsor, Leverege's IoT Solutions Development Platform, which provides everything you need to create turnkey IoT products that you can white label and resell under your own brand. To learn more, go to IoTchangeseverything.com. that's IoTchangeseverything.com. So without further ado, please enjoy this episode of the IoT For All podcast. Welcome guys to the IoT For All Show. Thanks for being here this week.

- [Anders] Thank you.

- [Henrik] Thanks a lot, thanks for having us, Ryan.

- [Ryan] Absolutely, I'm looking forward to this conversation. Let's start off by having each of you give a quick introduction about yourself, background experience, all that kind of stuff, and then we'll dive into it.

- [Henrik] Perfect, so my name is Henrik Picard, CTO at an Onomondo. I co-founded it together with our CEO Michael, 10 years ago in 2012 approximately, I'm a computer scientist of background and been into Telco industry before also. Trying to dive into all the technical stuff in Telco and IoT.

- [Ryan] Fantastic.

- [Anders] Yeah, and I'm the new guy on the block, you could say. I came in about a year's time ago to head up the commercial side of things and really take us from, I would say a pretty mature product at the time, to actually getting out to a broad range of customers. So before that I spent about four years in Bang & Olufsen, a Danish luxury consumer electronics company. So a good journey in tech, in a very global role at that point in time, and then about a decade in different ad agencies, digital, strategic, experiential, and had a business of my own at that time as well. So a very different journey from Henrik's, but I guess really representing the IT landscape we see today, with a lot of experienced players, and then all of the newcomers also accounting for a lot of the growth and new momentum we are experiencing.

- [Ryan] Fantastic, so Henrik, let me ask you, can you talk a little bit more about the company itself, what you all kind of do, your focus and role in IoT, as well as touching on kind of the story behind the founding of the company, what was the opportunity you all saw when you started the company? What was not happening in the market that you felt there was an opportunity to kind of build a company to do, and just kinda anything along those lines?

- [Henrik] Yeah, of course. So I guess sort of first and foremost, we've come sort of from the technical side of things, we started out from the infrastructure side of things, trying to develop and mature sort of, Telco intercommunication, you can say. So originally we actually had the focus on roam. So within the EU, and also I think globally in general, roaming was sort of an issue 10 years ago. It becomes less of an issue from a commercial point of view, at least for some sort of consumer faced subscriptions, and stuff like that. But we really tried to target roaming from the technical side of things and wanted to dive into on why roaming was such an issue. Was it just a pure, you can say commercial play, from the operators? Or did it also have a technical side to the things? And then we spent quite a few years on diving into that to learn, you could say, Teleco infrastructure. Cellular infrastructure, how networks communicate with each other, how they're not communicating with each other, and then slowly sort of found our way into IoT, where we really saw, you can see the benefits of innovation from a technical perspective. Again, sort of the consumer side of things, your iPhones and surfing Netflix when you're traveling. That can be pretty much solved from a commercial standpoint of view, but trying to do innovation within IoT and M2M, and a few of the things I really want to touch upon today also, needs to be sold from the technical side of things. And that's where I think we come into play. And of course other companies as well, where we try to innovate from the bottom up, trying to fix stuff in the right way, instead of trying to say, put patches on top of it, to solve the issues. IoT and M2M is such a different place than your iPhone or your Android phone when you're traveling. So this is stuff that needs to be deployed, that needs to live by itself. Remote unattended, a lot of stuff can go wrong. It has to be alive for many years and really have the right foundation for that, that speaks into the technical foundation of what a network needs to be at a global scale. And I think that's what we try to attack. And that's where we come from, from the infrastructure side of things.

- [Ryan] Right.

- [Henrik] Applying this, you can say as an operator today, as a virtual operator today at a global scale.

- [Ryan] Fantastic, so talk a little bit more about, so we've kind of mentioned that the infrastructure approach is kind of, you know, one of the differences, kind of have you guys come into the market, but just from an offering standpoint and just the general way you are presenting yourself to the market, how is that different than other companies out there that are trying to, you know, provide connectivity and provide a network for the IoT industry specifically?

- [Henrik] Well, I think the first approach that we come into when we speak to customers is, it's us being the operator, you can say, It's us handling everything globally without sort of diving too much into the technical aspect right now. We see a lot of solutions in the market. We try to stitch together, you can say, a global footprint again, to give you, you can say, internet connectivity or data connectivity globally, but it really introduces a lot of hurdle, a lot of barriers, when you go into IoT, both from a technical aspect, but also from a commercial aspect. Again, when you have large scale deployments, thousands of devices being deployed, that again has to go on for years. And when we talk to customers who already have deployed IoT devices, or have experience with it, they know all the pains that come with, you can say, regular connectivity, regular global roaming SIM cards and stuff like that. This is also where we sort of get a lot of time to talk about our solution, because they really understand the pains. They can understand the solutions that we bring to the table and really try to again, fix it from the bottom up, really trying to make connectivity quite simple, actually, quite transparent, even though it sounds, you can say, yeah, again, quite simple. But the matter of the fact is that it's really not that simple when you speak to a lot of other, you can say, companies in this realm.

- [Ryan] Sure, sure.

- [Henrik] But we really try to, you can say, open up the black box, show you what goes on underneath, show you how everything works everywhere, globally, that can be in the US and China and Europe, everywhere, and really try to speak into the pros and cons there are, yeah, with every single aspect of deploying, you can say, globally.

- [Ryan] Fantastic, now, either one of you can jump in on this one. I'd like to try to bring it full circle to our audience and talk about any use cases or deployments that you are involved in, or maybe you focus more on, just to kind of bring this all the way around for our audience that is maybe kind of learning and better understanding kind of the role you all play in, in the IoT landscape. And so if you all could touch on any use cases that you're excited about, or that you have been going on to just kind of show the kind of the power of the offering.

- [Anders] Yeah, yeah, so, you could say, we really have our stronghold on, and then what we find highly interesting about how IoT is developing is, the notion of the global aspect. So, global deployments and running and deploying global fleets, and also add to that then the mobility and the movement of assets. That's really the hardest thing to fix. We see some, even those that have a strong and well-built local and national foothold, but really the problems files, see and hence the interesting challenges start as soon as we cross borders. And as soon as we go outside of the PUC's, and the struggle becomes real, with scaling, and we actually see that real business impact in front of us. So that's what we've been focusing on a lot. And that's what, on the back of what Henrik just explained, these 730 deep network integrations, we've done all over the world, from brand level, and then really comes into play, offering a range of interesting upsides, benefits, are completely new units for the customers today and the range of customers we are in dialogue with, present day.

- [Ryan] Fantastic, so when you all were kind of bringing this to market, or I guess even just lately, what are some of the biggest challenges that you've kind of come across in building this network, providing this network to the world, to IoT companies, to be able to utilize? What are some of the things that you've come across, noticed, that were the biggest challenges? And maybe how you kinda overcame them to kind of get to where you are now?

- [Henrik] I think it's definitely explaining what we do and how we do it differently. Almost also like, you ask, maybe we sound a bit like, like everybody else, saying we're global, we can name hundreds of networks, et cetera.

- [Ryan] Sure.

- [Henrik] But in this one, when we actually dive in. So you can say, each and every single aspect of the, sort of the solution, that's where we sort of really are able to explain how we are different. And I can give a few examples.

- [Ryan] Great.

- [Henrik] Just to, yeah. So one thing again is speaking into, you can say, the networks that we have, 700 plus something, A lot of other companies have 500, 700, 800, et cetera, for us, of course, it's a matter of saying that we are global, yes, that's fair enough. It's so important for us to say also, that in every single network, it's our own call, running things. So that's sort of an initial point. So again, if you're in the US, if you're in China, if you're in Europe, it is us handling everything that goes on in a network.

- [Ryan] Okay.

- [Henrik] And no data is exchanged through third party, et cetera, et cetera. So that's a very sort of deep foundation to build innovation upon, saying that it's us controlling everything.

- [Ryan] And let me ask before you, let me jump in and just, can you expand on that a little bit, and talk a little more why that's so important?

- [Anders] Just from an example point of view, again, speaking into sort of the, the EICC or the E-Sim that we're seeing, being mentioned quite a bit, that is sort of stitching, you can say, a lot of agreements together to get, give a global footprint, and maybe also to give a commercial benefit in some countries or regions.

- [Ryan] Okay.

- [Anders] Maybe also to overcome, you can say, permanent roaming issues, but it's more about, you can say, stitching a lot of agreements together, switching between those, depending on where you are in the world, going from the bottom up. Instead, you can say having made integration, having to put a few technical items into it, having our own Pega gateway, et cetera, and every single network that we have, being able to select Pega gateways, depending on if it's in the US and China, or in Europe, et cetera, it gives us a lot of advantage and benefits. It gives us the benefit of being able to be permanently in, you can say in China, as well as in the US, as well as in Europe on the same profile. Again, it's sort of this one network mentality. Again, if you're a customer that already have been, sort of deploying IoT and try to run a big fleet globally, you'll know all the hurdle there is to, you can say, switching between profiles, the constraint it puts on both the devices, the commercial aspect of having multiple subscriptions running for the same physical SIM, you can say. Just clearing that up, making sort of a clean slate, a clean network, is really what we try to do at a global scale, and that that's sort of where, when we mentioned all the networks, we actually mean that you get the benefit of all the networks. Other stuff also to touch upon again, is going to maybe others, mentioning again 700 networks. In many cases, you're gonna find out that their sort of preferences aren't the same, just as an example, again, to select, you can say, based on commercial agreements, the cheapest network for you, and that really doesn't benefit sort of, the quality of service.

- [Ryan] Okay.

- [Henrik] It really doesn't benefit of you having miserable networks in a country, if the device always keeps trying to attach to the same preferred network, clearing that up, you can say, not from the infrastructure side of things, but from the SIM side of things, allowing you to, or your radio module to choose just the best network there is in that specific area, also adds onto the value of having these multiple networks, both globally, but also surely you can say specifically, in one country, and this is things that we see with customers, when they actually tested it out.

- [Ryan] Right.

- [Henrik] If they have experience with it, they really understand it. But when they test it out, that it really changes stuff for them. Again, it's just a much more seamless experience for them then they're used to, again, speaking into quality of service and really just speaking into opening up, you can say, what's under the hood, to allow them also to put or stitch together, you can say, their preferences depending on their device, their project, their customers, et cetera.

- [Ryan] Fantastic, now, when you talk with customers and you work with customers, is it kind of like a one size fits all approach, or how do you tailor the offering to different customers, different use cases, different, you know, within different industries, different kind of scale sizes, like how do you kind of tailor the offering to fit those organizations or those individual use cases to help them be efficient on the cost side?

- [Hendrik] I think, first and foremost, we don't come with sort of the regular subscription plans and a one-size-fits-all model.

- [Ryan] Okay.

- [Henrik] This is also one of the first things where we are maybe a bit different. We try to put it in terms of sort of a network marketplace, meaning that when you come to us, we're not going to give you a sort of a global price or a European price or US price. We're actually gonna show you all the agreements that we have and all the prices that we have for each and every single network. And then it's actually,

- [Ryan] Okay.

- [Henrik] Up for you. You can say, together with us, of course we are happy to assist, but it's up to you to choose how you are prioritizing price versus quality versus coverage, versus et cetera, et cetera.

- [Ryan] Sure.

- [Henrik] And this is something that you can do on your own. Also after deployment, again, opening up the hood. You can say providing all the tools for you to just handle this yourself without having to speak to us. So if you want to go into the US and you want to have all the networks in the US because of quality of service, that is up for you to choose, if you would just want to have the cheapest price, you can select network with the cheapest price. And again, that's sort of up to you. We have this model where we actually don't earn money on the data. So we are really actually focusing on also lowering, you can say, the data consumption, which might sound a bit odd, but we strongly believe that, that will benefit, you can say, the greater good for IoT projects at a large scale.

- [Ryan] Right.

- [Henrik] We are, this is a volume game for us also.

- [Ryan] Okay.

- [Henrik] But not for any money on the data, but really trying to get devices out there in the field and doing whatever they're good at on collecting data and transmitting that back to the cloud, and whatever we can help with in that sense, that that's sort of our place to be.

- [Ryan] Yeah.

- [Anders] And this is really one for the notion of transparency, again, there's nothing we would love more than to to help in, said in all modesty. To try and reframe the discussion a little away from like, what's the price of a megabyte, which is very much a Tele legacy, towards seeing this as a tech space, as it is today, and then much more talking about automated solutions, nothing about inactivity or active SIM's, nothing like that. You pay simply if a SIM transfers data and adds value to your business, and that's it, period. It should be IoT first and not collar by the tee legacy here.

- [Ryan] It makes total sense. Now, when you all work with customers, are you working more directly with customers that are deploying solutions themselves for their company or their clients, or are you all working more with ecosystem partners to bring the connectivity in to the solution and kind of, and make it available? And the reason I ask that is because a lot of times, it's always interesting to learn where IoT adopters start their IoT journey. So do they start it by looking for a full-scale solution? Do they start it looking for hardware? Do they start it looking for connectivity, you know, they all started, or maybe even started by looking into the cloud. So when you all work with most customers, how does that usually start? Is that something that are coming directly to you with, are you working to build or make partner, you know, build partnerships with other ecosystem companies so that when they adopt a certain full-scale solution, your connectivity is the one that it's already coming with? Like, how does that, how do you usually handle that? Or is it kind of a mix across the board?

- [Hendrik] Yeah, I would say we do both, the explanation for that assembly, the difference in time.

- [Ryan] Sure.

- [Anders] So we have these partner dialogues going, the OEM dialogue, and that takes quite a bit of time as everybody is listening to your great show here, Ryan, will know. And then on the other hand, we're working quite a lot directly with anything ranging from SMV's up to the really large ones as, as Maersk, the Danish shipping and logistics company, where we are the ones making sure that the refrigerated containers will be tracked and live accessible all over the world, carrying Corona vaccines these days. So really it's a matter of catering to both, because what we've tried to do from the beginning is say, if you were to only deploy with one vendor globally and no practically meaning one SIM, baked in from the beginning, that's what we've built this for, that's what it should be like in our opinion, completely removing the need for forecasting what kind of SIMS for what coverage do you need where, with what agreements, you should be deploying on one thing, no matter if you are an SMV or you're a huge OEM manufacturer.

- [Ryan] Right.

- [Henrik] And really, we are seeing a lot of positive feedback on that in the market space. So it will just be a matter of time before we then seeing that materializes on both side of the line you rightfully draw up here.

- [Ryan] Fantastic, yeah, that's great. I love the approach you guys are taking, I appreciate all the information and kind of the background kind of on how this got started and why you all are different. 'Cause you know, there are a lot of different players in the market that are trying to do something similar, but I think the approach you all are taking is fantastic from the way you're describing it. So I wanted to break away from kind of these conversations and talk a little bit more high level for a second before we wrap up. So talk to me a little bit about the current landscape for cellular connectivity and IoT. It's something that is widely talked about, but maybe never really broken down to our audience in detail, kind of what the landscape really looks like. You know, we have MBI IoT, we hear a lot about, we have LTM, we hear a lot about, so can you talk a little bit about just how you all view the landscape and then taking MBI IoT and LTM, what are they exactly to somebody who's maybe unfamiliar and kind of what are their benefits?

- [Henrik] Yeah, so I think cellular connectivity, especially sort of where I would see first and foremost, it really makes sense. You can say it's global, it's globally deployed. It's standardized.

- [Ryan] Okay.

- [Hendrik] I think there's a lot of, sort of interesting and great technology out there speaking into LoRa, SigFox, other technologies as well. But it really, and strongly believe in that cellular just had the sheer benefit of being globally deployed. You can't take that away from it. Then you have, of course the technologies, 2G, 3G, 4G, NBIoT, and LCM, one being part of 4G. We also try to actually explain this in a blog post we have, to really, for customers to read up upon it, but I think both technologies really have sort of there, of course makes sense. They're unique or they're strong appearance, into IoT and into M2M. I think, not diving into sort of the technical aspects, but because those are quite different, but I think you've actually taken the good part from 2G and then sort of optimize it towards IoT. You focused on, you can say battery power consumption, for devices,

- [Ryan] Okay.

- [Henrik] You optimize on how many devices can be attached to a base station, et cetera, et cetera. So you've sort of taken old technology, 2G is a phenomenal technology for IoT actually, but, but we are seeing it being censored in many places, it's going to be replaced. NBIoT and Item one are easier and less expensive to run for operators as well. So it was that, that's definitely sort of the future, both NBIoT and LCM has been accepted as part of the 60 stack, meaning that now you get sort of, a certification that this is going to run for 20 plus years. That's also very nice to know when you deploy stuff that needs to sit there for five, seven, 10, 15 years. So this is sort of, this is technology that are here to stay. Then there's the whole sort of NBIoT versus LTM, which in many cases can sound a bit like religion. And also from operators, what they've deployed the first two, to be honest.

- [Ryan] Right.

- [Henrik] I think our point of view also was acting as an MVNO. We rent access in the radio access networks. In that sense, we don't care too much about what technology, as long as it's available and whatever fits the purpose, but just also to put a few words on it, we actually think, or we're seeing that, okay, MBIoT was quite fast out there. I think it was sort of also, to have sort of competition towards again, LoRa, Sigfox and other technologies that the tech, so battery power consumption, penetration, coverage. We saw MBIoT massively being rolled out a few years ago, but then we honestly seen LCM really catching up. It's being heavily deployed globally, first sort of in Europe and in the US, the Western part of the world, but heavily being rolled out globally now. We see a lot of the benefits that came from NBIoT, is also present in LCM. So you had the battery power consumption, you have the penetration of coverage, but then, and you also have all the features that regular cellular really, really serves or brings to you. So roaming a wholesale integration that's already present today in LCM, handling between base station, et cetera, all of that, without compromising, also serving sort of static, small, cheap IoT devices that needs to stay within one specific country. So from the looks of it, at this point of stage, of course, things can change. So we really see LCM gaining traction and really taking the lead into what is being mostly deployed. Just because of the sheer fact that it has all the benefits from regular cellular connectivity that we've seen NBIoT is slightly lacking.

- [Anders] And then maybe an add-on from commercial side to that would be that one thing is of course, talking a lot into the technologies, like, can I use this thing here? And certainly will be a meeting in BIT versus LTM, if not everyday, then several times a week in our dialogues. So I'm happy to bring it up, Ryan, but really one of the things we would love to hear people asking more is what about future-proofing?

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