Connecting Africa: Delivering IoT in Challenging Environments

In the United States, you deal with three operators: AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. In Africa? Try more than 100.

But the fact that Africa is such a different landscape to the US and European markets is the very key to why tracking, telematics, and IoT company Online Solutions has risen as a leader in the space.

Founder and Director Francesco Manis joins the IoT Leaders podcast to share how solving problems outside so-called “mature” economies has led to quicker growth and success.

The show explores:

1. Why connecting to the wrong tower might cause roaming rates to skyrocket
2. How the intricacies of multi-region networking in Africa makes connectivity uniquely difficult to tackle
3. Why backend process optimization is the real ROI of IoT
4. How the use of AI and smart data collation is critical in digital transformation

Tune in to hear how Online Solutions has overcome some of the biggest challenges across the telecom landscape today.

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Transcript

Nick Earle:

Hi. This is Nick Earle, CEO of Eseye. And today’s guest on the IoT Leaders podcast is from Botswana. It’s Francesco Manis, or Fran. He’s the founder of a very interesting company called Online Solutions. And essentially what you’re going to hear is, some of the stuff he’s doing is pretty advanced. He’s doing multi-country ubiquitous connectivity out of the same device, and also multi-RAT out of the same device. Now although that might sound like oh, well that happens elsewhere, I just want to re-emphasize, he’s doing this out of Botswana. There are over 40 countries in Africa. They each have typically two or three operators, roughly 100 operators in Africa. And they do not do good roaming rates between them. And he talks about the fact that they could be 100 times more expensive per megabyte if you by accident connect to the wrong tower, because you’re near the border.

And how do you solve that? He talks about the Eseye solution. He’s actually very generous, talking about our solution. How it’s made a complete transformation for his business, and how he’s doing multi-RAT now in the devices. And his vision of AI, in being able to digitize Botswana. Some great case studies in here. Game reserves, rhino conservation, industrial, concrete delivery. Just a great example of a partner really taking the capabilities of our solution and offering a service to customers which they’d never had before, which is causing a big growth in his business. So enough of my overview, let’s get going now with my discussion with Fran Manis, the co-founder of Online Solutions in Botswana. Enjoy.

So Fran, welcome to this edition of the IoT Leaders podcast.

Fran Manis:

Hey, Nick. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Nick Earle:

You’re very welcome. I think we’ve got a really interesting story today. And you’ve got a really interesting background, so let’s build up to that. First of all, as I say, just introduce yourself and the company that you’re the co-founder of.

Fran Manis:

Great. So my name is Francesco Manis, I’m co-founder of Online Solutions. We’re based in Gaborone, in Botswana and we border South Africa, so we’re in Southern Africa. We specialize in vehicle tracking and telematics, and an array of different types of hardware and software for tracking and visualizing data, depending on what the use case is.

Nick Earle:

So we’re going to get into that, and talk about some interesting use cases. But I know when we spoke previously that, if I’ve got this right, am I right, you actually have been an entrepreneur for a long time. I think you started your own company at 19. And I also think at some point, you were in the diamond business in some way. Have I got that right?

Fran Manis:

Kind of. Yes. I’ve been quite into entrepreneurship, and identifying opportunities and holes in the market. It’s a very unique place to do business, in Botswana and in Africa in general. So I did start my first business when I was 19. That was really revolving around physical security, network maintenance, that sort of thing. So we did access control cameras, supply of ICT equipment and maintenance of it. And we managed to get into a very niche space of dealing with a lot of the diamond companies around here. Botswana is quite well known for its diamond trade and tourism, so those are the two big contributors towards the GDP here. So we started with that. It was very stressful, but I learned a lot. And since I moved away from security and IT and we moved into online solutions, which is a different business model but it utilizes a lot of the similar skills that I’ve learned over the years.

Nick Earle:

And from there, so you pivoted… And I can imagine diamond tracking and high value shipments like diamond could be an interesting business to be in, let me put it that way. But you went into tracking in general. And we’re going to talk about things way beyond tracking, even getting to AI and predicting events. But let’s start off small to begin with. You went into tracking in general. And was that primarily, initially, was that just for Botswana? Or were you trying to do it across country borders?

Fran Manis:

So Nick, we started initially with Botswana. We were looking purely at vehicle tracking and fleet management. That was the low hanging fruit, if you will. And so we started off there, and we developed into being able to now track all sorts of things through different types of hardware. Battery operated devices. And then obviously started our relationship with Eseye that really enabled us to develop into a multi territory, or at least offer our solutions across multiple territories. Because now, we have the ability to attach onto any type of network. And our customers are varying. Some have vehicles that move locally, others do cross border logistics all over Africa. And so the requirement to have them have simplicity in the way of connectivity wherever they go was really paramount. If our devices are not connecting, then our solution doesn’t work. It started with vehicles, and now it’s really progressed and evolved into all sorts of tracking, which you said we are going to unpack it a bit more.

Nick Earle:

And we’ll go from vehicles to animals. But whenever I talk about… I mean for those of us that are not based in Africa, and I have visited many times. I love the place. But for many people, I don’t think they quite realize just the physical size of it. Because, the maps always squash it. The way we look at our maps just makes Africa look small, which it isn’t.

But secondly, just the number of countries. Now again, I’m going to ask you if I’ve got this right. My understanding is there’s over 40 different countries in Africa in general. Have I got that broadly right? I mean if you include right up to the North, with Egypt and Israel. And I guess include the Middle East, the UAE or whatever, is there about 40 countries?

Fran Manis:

Correct.

Nick Earle:

Yeah. And the regulators, they all have their own governments and regulators. And around the world, the regulators typically like three operators. So you’ve got a sense of competition. So when you talk about the ability just to track a, I don’t know. Toyota Land Cruiser or whatever across multiple countries, there’s potentially more than 100 different operators. So you have to traverse, to put together a regional solution.

Fran Manis:

And it actually goes beyond that. So there are some regions where the regulatory environment is a bit wild west. Others where certain MNOs have monopolized the market, so the rates are astronomical. Others where the density of people is quite low, so the economies of scale are not there. And therefore, the costs are extremely high. Other scenarios where infrastructure, like you said, the size is quite vast. So you have some MNOs that might really focus on a specific area, and so the others don’t have coverage. So it’s not a one for one, or apples to apples comparison.

So really, vehicle traveling from one side of the country to the other may very well pass through three different areas that only have one or the other of the three available MNOs. So that’s where the Eseye solution again comes in extremely useful, because you want to have oversight wherever that vehicle may be. And depending on where it is, the infrastructure will be scarce. And we need to have the ability to move across networks as and when needed.

Nick Earle:

I wanted to point that out to listeners. We have listeners all the way around the world, and increasing number of listeners in the US. And I’ll just use the US as an example. I mean, the US essentially has three operators. AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. And again, it’s a similar thing, it’s just much smaller size problem. They’re patchy and they’re not sharing every tower. And as you move between cities, you’re hopping between the different operators as you’re connecting to different towers. And they don’t have domestic roaming agreements either between them, because they’re competitors. And so the idea of truly national connectivity is difficult. But again, before we get into what you’ve achieved, take that problem and then take 40 countries and three operators per country. And then you are now the project manager, and you have to implement a regional solution. So what you’ve done is truly impressive.

So let’s get into what you have done. Eseye is 16 years old as a company, and I think we’ve been 14 years present now in Africa. But when we built the solution, we always had this concept of the Federation. The idea of, you just have to be able to connect to as many operators as possible. You can’t be locked in, you can’t rely on just a few links. You have to be able to not only be able to connect to multiple operators. But as you say, when things go wrong, you have to be able to switch to another operator. Because unless you build the architecture that way, it’s the only way of achieving any acceptable percentage connectivity level.

So you started with us, can you remember how many years ago you found Eseye and we started doing business together?

Fran Manis:

I think we’re going on year six at the moment.

Nick Earle:

Okay. All right. And are we doing okay? I shouldn’t ask this live on a podcast, should I?

Fran Manis:

To be honest, initially we started with one of the local MNOs. I won’t say any names. But it became very clearly apparent and quite fast that it was not a viable solution. Because there was no oversight in terms of being able to see each SIM card, and what it’s doing. There was no ability to suspend or monitor usage.

If it crossed the border, we just got an astronomical bill. There’s no way to actually audit that either. So we learned very quickly that it wasn’t going to work. And then we found Eseye, we started working with you guys. And honestly, we have not looked back. And in fact, it’s really opened up a lot of other avenues for our business. So we couldn’t be happier with you guys.

Nick Earle:

Well, great. And actually those other avenues, of course you then expanded out of tracking. And I’m wondering if we can then get into that here. I know you’ve done a lot in the conservation area, and with endangered species like rhinos. And we can’t talk too much about that, because on the simple basis of you don’t want to tip off the trackers. And so you have some fantastic case studies. But it’s like defense business, you can’t talk about it by definition. Because otherwise, you let people in on the secrets. But I know that you’ve been working with some of the game reserves up there. I talked earlier at the beginning of the podcast, this idea of events and event predictions. And you’ve taken an approach, a classic internet of things approach to a game reserve. So it’s not tracking a vehicle, although there are vehicles in game reserves. It’s much broader than that, isn’t it, what you’ve done?

Fran Manis:

Yeah. Absolutely. So going back to the rhino thing and poaching, obviously is quite a sensitive subject, so that’s why we can’t go into too much detail. But certainly, the technology and the various stuff that we provide has proved to be quite beneficial to them in their endeavors to protect the animals and that sort of thing.

And going into the nature reserves, so we work with quite a few of them. It started initially as vehicle tracking, being able to monitor driver behavior, things like that. And slowly as we progressed, we realized that there’s a lot more scope for collecting data that is quite useful to them. So an example, with the vehicles moving around, over time you’re able to now take the history of where they’ve been. And then data scientists use that information or that data to then look at the environmental impact of those vehicles on these reserves. So that’s very important. So they want to preserve the wildlife and nature. So they utilize that data to see, what is the impact we’re having? Is there anything we can change? How can we make it more efficient? How can we protect the environment in a better way?

Nick Earle:

So can you explain that for those of us who don’t live and visit the bush and whatever as often? So that would be… So for instance, if it’s been really wet, if it was marshland or whatever, it could be physical damage by driving these big vehicles with these big tires over the same place and looking at the effect of the vehicles on the land itself?

Fran Manis:

Exactly. We can see that there’s a lot of wear and tear. We can see that these vehicles have eroded the roads, or they’re disturbing the wildlife. They’re forcing them to maybe go outside of their normal behaviors. And so then they can reassess and say, okay, let’s limit the amount of vehicles that can go into any given space. Or let’s space out the time that they spend. Or let’s try different type of vehicles. It just gives them insights that they wouldn’t have had previously without that data. And this then naturally led to additional things. So you mentioned AI, one of the software providers that we’re working with, they’re a software development company based in South Africa. And they’ve developed a platform which essentially, it’s quite versatile in the sense that we can customize it, depending on whatever requirements are there from the customer. Whether it be mining or conservation, or just any kind of service industry.

But specifically for conservation, it’s a modular approach. So through mobile phones, you’re able to capture all sorts of different events. Be it an animal sighting, be it a poaching incident, be it a sick animal. Any type of infrastructure issues. A collapsed bridge, or a hole in a fence, et cetera. They capture this through a mobile phone, whether they’re online or offline. If they’re offline, when they get back to say a Wi-Fi zone or GSM, then it would upload that data to the platform.

Over time, now you’re able to do a bunch of really interesting stuff. So in the instance of poaching events, you can see where did these events take place? And the AI that analyzes the data in the background is then able to predict where there might be a future incident taking place.

Nick Earle:

You’re using the drivers, as I understand it, let’s say the drivers of the cars. The Land Rovers or whatever they are, you’re using them to collect event data on their phones. You’re uploading it to a software platform. And then when an event happens, you’re looking for patterns, or is there things that happen at the same time as an event? And then you then can turn it the other way around and then say well, when these things happen, the percentage chance of a poaching incident or another event is X.

So you then go from a reactive model to a proactive. And actually ultimately I guess, a preemptive. Because you’re saying, let’s give them advice to take action to stop it happening in the first place.

Fran Manis:

Exactly. So over time you’re able to see, we had a breach in the fence. At this point, we had a poaching incident over here. And this has occurred so many times. So then that gives us insight to think, okay, the next time is likely to happen here. We’re able to analyze the time in between incidents, for example.

And then going to animal sightings. There are some of these reserves that have population of wildlife, especially your cats, leopards, cheetahs, lions, things like that. And every time you capture an event of where they’ve been seen, that then obviously goes to the platform. And over time, you can create a heat map and see, okay, this is where they spend their time. Or this is their territory. And so that then helps for a variety of reasons. For the vets, in case they need to do something. For the tourists themselves, so they have a better idea. They’re not running around the whole reserve, trying to do a sighting-

Nick Earle:

Spending less than five days there and didn’t see anything. Yeah.

Fran Manis:

Exactly. So there’s a multitude of benefits that it gives them, being able to have this data and analyze it after the fact.

Nick Earle:

Do you think, Fran, again as I said previously, I’ve been to a few game reserves. You call them nature reserves. Nature reserve, game reserves. I’ve been to a few in Africa, and there are different levels of sophistication, let me put it that way. Do you think the model that you’re describing will over time become a standard way these reserves operate? Because you seem to be weaving in conservation, land management, security, animal welfare, the visitor experience. So there’s a top line benefit for the reserve. Because you have happier visitor experience, they’re going to come back more. Repeat visits. But at the same time, certainly the ones that I’ve been to have been very, very big on conservation. And they almost advertise themselves about their work with conservation and the local environment.

So do you think that this is the start of a big change for certainly, maybe starting off with the bigger reserves in Africa?

Fran Manis:

Yeah. I think so. Most definitely. So our president, the president of Botswana has put a mandate forward where he’s really pushing for the digitalization of the country. And so that then in turn overflows into all the different sectors. Mostly in the private sector. And what we’ve seen is that there is a really growing amount of adoption for digitalization. So all from up North, we have all sorts of projects. People dealing with donkey breeding, donkey milk, that sort of stuff. Other people dealing with goats and livestock.

And so with digitalizing their processes, we’re able to now create a platform where they’re able to really monitor their vaccination status, for example. They’re really able to scale beyond just a piece of paper. They’re able to also consolidate their operations, and management can have oversight from wherever they are. You have a lot of big corporates that have entities in Botswana, they can’t be on the ground. A lot of stuff is very brick and mortar. But we’re definitely seeing a big drive towards this digital age, and implementing these things. And seeing people adopt them, use them. The education is getting to where it needs to be, the technology is getting to where it needs to be. So most definitely we’re seeing a big change in that regard.

Nick Earle:

From our perspective when we look from the outside in, because based in the UK, although we have an operation as you know in Johannesburg, once you solved this problem… One of our customers was doing something on a sugar plantation. And I remember we got an escalation in the, I think it was a truck or something, probably with sugar cane or whatever in the back. At least in my mind, that’s not how I envisaged it. The costs per day for the connectivity was X. And they just took the wrong turn, and they went… They were right on the border. Their plantation was right on the border with another country. And they went into another country, and they connected to another tower. And as you said, suddenly… I mean, it wasn’t just two X. It was 100 X, because they were actually now using an operator SIM, and they were roaming onto somebody else’s network.

And in Europe we’re spoiled over here, because there’s EU regulations around roaming and they cap the prices. And that’s all been introduced in the last year, but it doesn’t exist in Africa. And you can get a SIM that is, I don’t know. Suddenly 400 times more expensive. And it sounds crazy, but it actually can… If you connect to the wrong tower by accident and roam onto another country’s operator, the gouging, the price things are huge. Which discourages a national initiative like you said, to digitize the country is hugely needed, and it will accelerate the development of the country. If you can’t get that bit of the technology solution under control, you’re never going to be able to do it. Because, people won’t adopt the technology.

Fran Manis:

Yeah. No, you’re 100% right. And that’s not even an exaggeration. That’s accurate. You cross a border, and you can be looking at 100 X. Typical example is you drive to South Africa from Botswana, you give your child an iPad. They open a couple of YouTube videos, and next thing you’re mortgaging the house to pay the bill. It’s ridiculous.

So I can’t stress how invaluable it is to have the oversight to be able to design a package that you know where it needs to work, and have those costs upfront. And be able to mitigate any changes that occur. So we know if it crossed the border, notify us. Or switch it off, or allow it. Or suspend that particular SIM. These tools are invaluable both for us, and for our customers obviously as well.

Nick Earle:

And you did mention that, we shouldn’t give the impression that you just do these reserves. Given the digitization that’s going, you mentioned I think manufacturing and mining.

I think you also have some big industrial case studies as well. I think one of them was, was it in the cement business or something like that? It’s a big client as well.

Fran Manis:

So what we’ve realized, Nick is, it’s not a one size fits all. So over the years we’ve really done a lot of work research, and educate ourselves on the various communication protocols that exist. And what we’re seeing more and more is that software providers are creating platforms that are hardware agnostic. So they’re able to ingest all sorts of different hardware that is communicating in different ways. So be it GSM, be it LoRaWAN or Sigfox, or satellite or whatever the case may be. So we are able to essentially take all of these different components, depending on the environment, depending on the type of equipment or sensors that we’re using or monitoring, and then ingesting into a platform. And like you said rightfully so, so we operate across several different verticals from your finance institution.

So a great example is a point of sale for a bank. If that goes down, they’re losing money. Both the retailer who’s using that point of sale device, and the bank. So this again, is an incredible solution for that. One of the use cases that we had previously discussed was a ready mixed cement and concrete company that we deal with. And since we installed our tracking devices and driver monitoring, they’ve really been able to optimize their business in a way that they hadn’t before. I mean a very basic example is concrete needs to be, it’s quite a precise thing. So by being able to see where their truck is, they’re able to really optimize their process. So when it’s on the way to their batching plant, they can get ready for the truck. They know how far it’s going to be. They can notify their client that the truck is on the way, so they’re ready when it arrives there. They can monitor the driver’s behavior, so therefore reduce the maintenance cost of their vehicles. It seems quite basic, but these little tools allow them to increase their performance by 50%.

Nick Earle:

I did an analyst call yesterday, and they were talking about the return on investment on IoT. And one thing I was stressing, which you just referred to actually is the return on investment in IoT is, yes, getting the data is useful. And people say that data is the new oil. But the ROI, when people look at the ROI, they have to sign off an IoT project, it’s these backend processes that people refer to. How can we optimize our backend processes? In the case of concrete, you mentioned that people don’t realize that concrete isn’t just concrete. I mean, it’s a certain formula for the job. Depending on what you’re wanting to use the concrete for, it’s a certain formula for the job. And also, it’s time bound. It only stays in that state for a limited period of time. So if you’ve got… That’s why the back of these concrete trucks rotate, because they’ve got to actually almost cook it so to speak, and deliver it when it’s ready.

And if they’re late, or they lose it, or there’s traffic, or a driver issue or whatever, it’s useless. You can’t use it for that, and then you’ve got to get it out of the truck as well. So the optimization of the backend processes is, and again using AI, this will turbocharge it, frees up tremendous productivity improvements of manufacturing, supply chain, delivery, quality, et cetera, et cetera. And that really is the benefit of AI. And that’s where the projects get approved. Because if you can show someone you can save them 10% in their supply chain costs, then that’s much more tangible to them. Then I can get data out of a truck. And I think that’s what you are hitting by going across these other verticals. Because there is this inherent inefficiency in the business models, because you haven’t been able to do this. And again, back to what we said earlier, the moment you can do ubiquitous regional, of course with our solution global connectivity, you then suddenly have the chance for the first time to hit these big operational improvements that you’ve never been able to touch for the last however many decades.

Fran Manis:

In the instance of the concrete company, they get paid per load. So if they can all of a sudden save 20 minutes on each load because they’ve optimized their processes, now they’re getting extra two loads a day. Over a month, that’s huge. And then being able to monitor their drivers they’re saving on their fuel bill, which is their biggest spend every month.

And granted they’re really innovative, and they use the system. And they’re really into it. So they really, really put it to good use, which is, I mean for us as the service provider, it’s awesome to see people really getting the full benefit out of it. So we’re happy to work with people like this, that are really grasping it and using it to its full potential.

Nick Earle:

Talking of full potential, let’s talk about the future. And you mentioned it briefly and you skipped over it, so I want to come back to it. We talked about cellular, and the fact that there’s over 100 African operators. And they’ve all got their own SIM, and they’ve all got their own IMSI. And they all want to get the connectivity themselves, and charge anybody else a huge fortune if they drop onto their network. So together we’ve solved that problem, and you’ve talked about the benefits of that to you and your customers. But then you also mentioned very briefly, what’s known as multi-RAT. You talked about LoRa, Sigfox, satellite, which has enormous potential for Africa for obvious reasons. Cellular is only, I believe I’m right saying globally, cellular is only 11% of IoT. Gets more than 11% of the publicity because of the big mobile network operators, but it’s only 11%.

And there are many others. There’s private networks, there’s public networking. There’s Bluetooth, there’s new forms of Bluetooth coming out. I mean, the number of different communication types is also expanding. So you’ve got this two by two matrix, visually at least. You’ve got huge fragmentation of silo-based operators offering cellular. And then on the X-axis if you like, you’ve got an increasing number of RAT, radio access types. And so is your vision that ultimately what you want to be able to do is to be not just country agnostic, but RAT-type agnostic? Is that ultimately where you want to get to?

Fran Manis:

We are actually already realizing this vision to be fair, for different reasons. So I’ll give you another use case. So we’re working with quite a few farms at the moment. A lot of these farms are located in really remote areas. They do not have GSM coverage. Or they might have GSM coverage if they put their phone in a tree in one specific place in their farm, and they’ll get two bars of signal. In these instances, and they need to cover, or they need to monitor certain elements of their farm. For example, tanks, boreholes, refrigeration if it’s livestock and they have food, things like that.

So in these instances we would look to deploy a 0G network, either Sigfox or LoRaWAN. Through that, we can cover vast distances. And then we upload that data with satellite, or via GSM, or whatever the case may be. But by deploying this network, we’re then able to attach all sorts of sensors to monitor tank levels. To automate pumps, to refill their tanks. To see if their gates are open. If there’s breaks in their electric fence, stuff like that. So really turning into a scenario where we have all sorts of different devices communicating in different ways, but reporting to the same platform. So we are already seeing that. Am I allowed to talk about Infinity? Because, that’s also exciting.

Nick Earle:

You know what? You absolutely are allowed to talk. I’m told by my team I can’t mention any of our product names, because I’m biased and this isn’t the purpose. But hey, if you want to talk about our offering and how it addresses that, be my guest.

Fran Manis:

Okay. So I mean, SIAM is the previous version of your connectivity management portal. So that allows us to essentially log in, see how many SIMs we have available. Activate them, associate a package to them. See which network they’re attached to, and all sorts of data. And now with your newest iteration of that called Infinity, at least in the briefing that we got and now that we’ve started looking at it, the vision there is for it to be agnostic also in the sense that you’ll be able to ingest different communication types and different types of hardware and stuff like that, and give the same sort of tools. So that over the air, you’re able to send commands or visualize all of your different devices in one place.

So we are really seeing a lot of suppliers moving in this direction, and it really makes sense. Because you don’t want to have 10 or 100 different platforms to try and monitor all of your stuff. You want to see it in one place. So we are seeing that more and more with different suppliers, and it really seemed like the way to go. Because it is, again, not a one size fits all. We’re seeing, depending on what you’re trying to achieve, you’re going to use a variety of different technologies to achieve that. So it’s exciting to be working with guys like you that are leaders in the space. And this is what the future looks like I think, for sure.

Nick Earle:

Now that you’ve mentioned it, our view on the future, and we do an annual IoT predictions report, which is the number one downloaded piece of collateral off our website. And it’s been in the last three annual predictions reports. But our view is that, we started off first of all being operator agnostic. And you talked about that at the beginning of the call. The SIMs have to be completely agnostic to the operator. And recent developments like the eUICC standard and eSIM have now made that more and more common. New capabilities like SGP.32, so the ability to pull profile down as opposed to push the profile in all those things are making the SIMs operator agnostic. The next barrier is what you just said, or the next thing we have to break is the connection type agnosticity. So if you can actually say, you don’t want to have different devices for different connection types.

So this comes down to the firmware optimization, and the fact that the switching rules engine will be resident in the device. So if satellite is available, then use that. Or if not use cellular, but only if the signal strength is this. So in other words, the logic will be device resident. If you can then get RAT agnostic connectivity together with operator agnostic, where the operators not just now the MNOs, they could be people offering private. In a mine, you have a private network. Or the operator could be a satellite company. Then you have a second order of magnitude benefit, because now it’s any operator, any network. And actually we believe that in a few years’ time, there’ll be a third one. And the third one will be cloud agnostic, which is a technology known as CoAP. But instead, where you can say well, I want to use this cloud provider for that, but I want to use… Maybe a AWS for this, and I want to use Azure for that.

Or your customer says, no. I’m a mining company, I’ve got my own private network, so I want to have a hybrid cloud approach. The moment you can get those three axes if you like of agnostisity, you can then say, okay, I want a sensor… And the sensor prices come down to very cheap, very low solar-powered, which works really well in Africa. You then say, I’m going to flood the place with sensors. I’m going to collect it by whatever the right technology is. It could be attached to an animal’s ear, it could be on a post. It could be on a truck. It could be on anything, a parcel. I’m going to flood the place with sensors. I’m going to collect the data with the best communication type that’s available. I’m going to aggregate it into a single platform, with a single set of APIs, with a single billing interface.

And I’m not going to worry about where the device is, because the software, the logic, the application, the device will choose the best connectivity based on where it is. So a device in a tree, I like your point about the phone in a tree. A device in a tree could choose different connectivity to a device 20 yards away, attached to the wall of a building. And I think we are getting there. And we have to solve these problems, like you talked about, RAT. Great that you’re already doing it. Multi-RAT is now coming very quickly, but we also have to be able to do it without adding more silos. It can’t be different platforms. We can’t solve the industry’s problem by giving you more complexity. And so I think what you are saying is very much in line with what we’re trying to do, which is to do everything that you’ve said with one platform, one user interface, Infinity.

That’s why we called it Infinity. It’s so big. These three dimensions, it’s so big. It’s huge. And then so you can say, I can manage all of this through one interface. That’s the holy grail. And you can… By the way, Fran, if you can do that in Africa, back to where we started, there really is no reason why people can’t do this in Europe, in LATAM, where there are similar market dynamics, structural dynamics in the market. In Asia, and in domestic US where there’s only three operators as we said. So it’s great to hear your case study, your endorsement from doing all of this in Botswana. I mean, it’s a tremendous case study.

Fran Manis:

No, absolutely. I mean without this, we wouldn’t have been able to scale the way we are. And touching on what you said, infrastructure is also of question. We know that for example, some areas are taking 2G down. So what happens when you have a specifically 2G device, and all of a sudden there’s no 2G available anymore? Sure, the SIM can operate across 2G, 3G, 3G, 4G, 5G, NB-IoT or whatever it is. The same SIM, which is amazing, but the device might not be the same. So one of the manufacturers we work with quite closely, they just brought out their global device now, which would have 4G, 3G, 2G fallback. And it’s exactly what you said. So the device will be able to determine what is available, and then utilize that specific protocol.

So really, everyone is gearing up for this versatility that can just adapt to whatever environment it finds itself in. So therefore, reducing the complexity. And also taking away the issue of, okay, we sold you the solution. Two years down the line, it now doesn’t work anymore.

Nick Earle:

Doesn’t work, and you have to throw it away. And there’s a lot of, back to your first story, trackers. There’s a lot of cheap trackers out there. A lot of them come from China. I think you’ve seen them as well. And you go on the web, and they seem to solve everything. And then you suddenly realize why they’re cheap trackers, because it’s the firmware. It’s the device intelligence and the device capabilities. It’s not the SIM actually, and the connectivity. Because, the SIMs will connect to all those different networks. My phone connects to those different networks when I move around, when I go on holiday. But if the firmware doesn’t get optimized based on what you’re connecting to, then it doesn’t work. And so we always say it’s all about the device, and you need to have the device be able to optimize itself to the connectivity that’s local to the device. That’s a easy to say, but it’s a difficult thing to do. You need deep device expertise to solve that problem. Not just have a SIM that can connect to 2G, 3G, 4G whatever.

Fran Manis:

No, you’re right. I mean, and we’ve seen it time and time again where a customer will come to us and say okay, well we found this device. It’s half the cost of yours. Why can’t I just use this? And then once you dig a bit deeper, you realize that, okay, our device will use three megabytes per month. Whereas your device is going to pull 100 megabytes per month. So yes, it’s half the price, but in terms of actually making it work, it’s going to cost you 10 times more. And that comes down to exactly what you just said.

Nick Earle:

Or a few hundred times more, God forbid you take it over the border.

Fran Manis:

Unless you’re using an Eseye SIM, then you’re okay.

Nick Earle:

Unless you’re using an Eseye SIM. There you go. You’re allowed to say that, not me.

Fran Manis:

Yeah. The technology is very important. And the market is flooded, and so… And people are getting burnt. But again, it’s our job as a provider to ensure that we provide the best service, the best hardware, best software, et cetera. And that’s what we try and do.

Nick Earle:

It’s a great story. And again, I go back to what I said at the beginning, it would be a great story if you were doing this in the US, or the UK, or Europe or wherever, but it’s a really great story, the fact that you’re doing it from Botswana. So I really congratulate you.

Any final thoughts from yourself on what you think has been the overall experience or lessons learned that you can share with people?

Fran Manis:

Nick, I think from our side, we’re seeing there’s developments in hardware that allow us to essentially remove borders. So we can sell to anyone. With the Eseye service, it really just makes the world that much smaller. And we are not confined to our geographical area. We can sell to anyone. And we can ship to you, and it will work. So really, just this technology just allowing us to service anyone anywhere. Essentially, it just made the world smaller. I think that’s my point.

Nick Earle:

There you go. I couldn’t have put it with… A job in our marketing department awaits. All right, Fran. I really appreciate it. Thanks very much for sharing your story and your success, and congratulations on it, with our listeners. And just to wrap it up, you’ve been listening to the IoT Leaders podcast with me, your host, Nick Earle, the CEO of Eseye. And I just want to again, thank Fran. Francesco Manis of Online solutions. He’s the co-founder, and a really interesting story.

And he solved a lot of the problems that people in the so-called more mature economies and countries have not yet solved. But sometimes when you are at the extreme end of things, you do tend to leapfrog faster than other companies. And so I think that’s one of the reasons why this has been such an interesting story. So Fran, thank you very much. And we look forward to following your progress with interest as you pursue that vision of being able to sell anything to anybody anywhere, and it just connects.

Fran Manis:

Great. Nick, thank you very much. It’s been absolute pleasure. And we continue to look forward working with you.

Nick Earle:

Okay, great. Thanks a lot.

Resources

Case Studies

Rhino Conservation Botswana

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Blogs

Choosing an IoT Connectivity Platform 

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Blogs

Multi-RAT and R17: The Future of Optimized Connectivity?

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Videos

What is the AnyNet Federation and How Does it Work?

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