In the next three to five years, the Internet of Things (IoT) business will go through improving the interface between the connected thing and the user. The different actors in the Argentine value chain -from the equipment developer to the telecommunications operator- are adapting business models and technologies -and specifying them by vertical-, to design "as-a-Service" instances on the connected object .

This trend can be lowered to the plain, to a specific case, in the automotive area. Connectivity was originally focused on the car itself, so that it would have better performance. Currently, the focus is on enriching the driver's experience with the vehicle, and this will serve as a prelude to a next phase, in about five years, known as "Vehicle to Everything": that is, the connected car interacting with other vehicles, with the infrastructure, with the users. Thus, an integration model is generated, with the car as a fundamental part of the Smart City.

OnStar, from General Motors, will reach some 55,000 connected vehicles in Argentina by the end of 2023. This is equivalent to 80% of the units that the firm sells in the country, of the Cruze, Onix, Tracker, Equinox, S10 and Trailblazer models. Jaime Gil Toledo, director for General Motors South America of OnStar and Connected Services, told Convergencia that the opportunities will be in data monetization, new B2B and B2C products, greater efficiency of current services and cooperation with government agencies.

For the transition towards Mobility as a Service models, certain technological properties in car connectivity will be key, which will be available in the country in the medium term. First, the architecture of the vehicle, with sensors talking to each other, scheduled for three years from now; 5G and Cloud-based, with the services available in the car connected to the cloud; Over the Air (OTA) and SDV (software-defined vehicles), the point where the true change in the business model resides, since the car is taken as a service platform; biometric voice commands; AI and connected cameras.

OnStar uses 4G connectivity from Claro in Argentina. Fernando Martínez Corfield, IoT B2B Product Manager of the local subsidiary of América Móvil, distinguished two variants in the provision: the management of APNs for the corporate segment, of a postpaid nature; and the retail offer for drivers, with prepaid plans. Customized data packages are also offered as the "tasting package" with which users start consuming OnStar platform services. To improve the interface between the connected thing and the user, Claro focused on unifying the purchase portal, notifications, and contact with General Motors call centers through an integration, so that the "front" for the driver is always OnStar. With this, the operator seeks to move away from the focus on connectivity associated with the car, and focus on the person-car link.

With 5G it will be also possible to eventually think of more MaaS products, powered by private networks and network slicing. For example, for emergency services, so that the vehicle can prioritize certain emergency calls over general network traffic. In Claro they consider that electric mobility will in turn bring a greater need for interactions between the user and the connected unit, due to an increase in the number of updates that the car will receive.

Agro. Claro's IoT Alliance Program includes 20 partnerships in the Smart City, Logistics, Oil&Gas and Agro verticals, with "Connection Managers" for each business segment, and NB-IoT and LTE-M connectivity. In particular, NB-IoT is being used for agricultural and livestock services, a field in which the América Móvil subsidiary has a joint marketing alliance with DVL, an agtech from Venado Tuerto, belonging to the TC firm. DVL, dedicated to electronics and software, offers the "Connected Farm" platform for telemetry of the agricultural production process, from the detection of water to the control of tillage, the monitoring of feed unloading for feedlots.

Federico Serrani, TC manager, recalls in a dialogue with Convergencia that, initially, connectivity for agriculture focused on developing a communications alternative in agricultural establishments, to collect data and dispatch it on some type of connectivity. Then the need of customers for added value began to be detected.

Devices developed by DVL can have up to 12 different analog and 5 digital sensors. One of its clients, Adecua Agro, from Corrientes, achieved a 40% improvement in productivity in its rice fields by gaining efficiency in the use of water based on indicators obtained by sensors. Another key product in the DVL portfolio is tillage control, through the identification of drivers on the machines, the hours the engine is on, its use, and the calculation of the carbon footprint.

The company has 1,865 clients in Argentina, although not all of them have Claro connectivity. It comes from using other types of IoT connectivity (LoRa, for example) but is migrating to the operator's NB-IoT, hand in hand with this transition towards as-a-service models.