 All right, welcome to Supporting Your Tech. My name is Greg Jackson. I'll be your host today. Joining me today is Michael Fry. He's a technology veteran. He has 15 years of experience in some of the largest telecom companies in the nation, and specializes in helping small businesses make sound decisions with his experience in technology, marketing, and finance. Welcome. Thanks for having me, Greg. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. Yeah. So today we're going to change our format a little bit. We're going to talk just a few minutes about some of the news, and then we're going to talk about IoT and what it means for your small business, what it means in general, and then we'll go into some definitions and kind of how it affects everybody. Okay. So first thing that came to mind was the Hawaiian Tell happenings going on. What are we looking at with this purchase? Right. So this was a culmination of months and months, probably over a year, planning for our Cincinnati Bell acquisition of Hawaiian Tell. The final hurdle was the FCC's approval of that merger. I believe the buyout was $650 million. They've done an excellent job. Cincinnati Bell is a well-run company. They're keeping a lot of the local management. John Cometier will continue to be president or will be president of the local business unit here. I think it's great for the people of Hawaii as well. Yeah. I mean, if you had to guess what kind of changes do you think, are there going to be a lot of changes a little? I think a lot of the changes you'll see will actually be invisible to the average consumer. A lot of what Cincinnati Bell brings to the table is their operations and the way that they manage the company. Okay. I think you'll see a lot there. And then you'll probably see some innovative bundles. I think you'll continue to see a strong focus on pushing fiber deeper into the network. If you look at kind of what Cincinnati's done in Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky, they've done a lot of that there in the market. So I think we're in for some good stuff. Yeah. I mean, I've been really happy with the whole fiber rollout. I'm really excited that, I mean, not just for the speed, but the fact that, you know, we've got a competitor, right? I mean, it's always better when you have a couple of companies offering better solutions. I just, do you think it'll affect the build out? Do you think they'll get fiber out there any quicker? You know, I think it's too soon to tell and I'd hate to speculate on something like that. But I think, you know, it couldn't hurt, right? Anytime you bring somebody, a partner in like that or this person. And in this case, you know, a company that just has years of experience doing that, I think you'll see good things. Great. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. That's great. So next one I got is the, this is a pretty big one, the AT&T, Time Warner. What's that all about? Are we looking at content and internet? Right. So my take on it, and I think what really gave the regulators pause, because this one was back and forth for quite a while, right? And with the new administration, I think it was kind of on again, off again. So I think it's great for the industry, or at least for AT&T in the industry, because they have the opportunity to vertically and a great right. So they're buying the content. And then you'll see them push that content onto their subscribers or out to their subscribers, I should say. They actually just announced in the past day or so, a new service called Watch TV. So it's going to be $15 a month. You can consume it over your Android device, over your Apple device, AT&T. Okay. So over your any device, Fire Stick, all those different devices you can plug into your television or on the go. And it's $15 a month for 30 channels. It's all you can eat. Livestreaming. Yeah. I don't know that it includes the service, the way that the data gets to you. Okay. Like Netflix is, depending on your plan, maybe $9 to 20 bucks. Yeah, you know, one of the things about Netflix, I'm wondering about the whole 4K thing. They want me to pay a few extra bucks for the 4K. You think they'll do that? Well, I don't know. I don't know. I think it's TBD, as I said. I'm sure having been in that business, I know our goal is always to kind of up the spin with the customer. Add value, get more money for that value. Add value, get more for that dollar. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this is a pretty big deal. I mean, they're talking about other companies are talking about, you know, kind of, okay, now that this has been done, it's, I mean, the news is suggesting that we're going to see more offerings or more mergers like this. I think you will. And I think if you look at Disney's recent actions and they're talking, you know, $175 billion, I think the latest price tag was there. Big numbers. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, AT&T has shown up a couple times in my list here. Before we get to the other AT&T one, Alexa and Mary, that's a great topic for today. Right, right, right. And I'm sure we'll get into this in a couple of minutes, but the whole Alexa in your hotel room, you know, that's kind of the next step. I think Marriott was also one of the first to allow you to bring your Netflix into the hotel room. Okay. So, they've always been a technology leader. So, it's good to see this going in. I know I use Alexa and Google Home myself. You probably do as well, you know, I probably don't get the full value of it, but it might be nice to have in your hotel room a little slice at home. Right. So, just imagine how people are going to be using that in the room. Is it like, finish my bill, check me out? Yeah, yeah. So, all those things. Book a room, book one of the Cabanas. Right. So, all those hotel services are going to be brought, you know, right in front of the hotel year, in this case, Marriott, and they'll be able to meet the customer's needs better. Again, it's about adding value to the customer experience through technology. And I think that's a recurring thing that we'll see through our talk today. But here, you know, one of the big concerns is privacy, right? So, in the news recently was Alexa, you know, listening in on, you know, private conversations. So, apparently, what's going to happen here is Alexa, who's, you know, a product, which is a product of Amazon, Amazon is going to essentially not allow Marriott to have the recordings of the conversations. So, they can control it. Correct. So, they're going to have like a wall guard in there. But then they're going to pass the telemetry data and all that. When was he in the room? When was he not? What channels did he watch? All that sort of stuff is going to go back to the mothership and the mothership in this case, being Marriott. Very interesting. Yeah. So, it'll help think of it both pros and cons. Yeah. From a service offering is going to allow them to tailor your experience at Marriott towards your preference. All right. So, I'm going to, I'm going to, I have a feeling we're going to talk about some of this stuff. So, I'm going to segue right into IoT and I'm going to start off with our AT&T NB IoT. Sure. So, NB IoT, no band Internet of Things network is another, from what I can understand and glean from the press releases, is another network in addition to the LTE network that's already out there that we know and love, right? This is a narrow band, there go low bandwidth network for speeds around 100 kilobits per second, right? So, if you have a number of Internet of Things devices, and we'll get into that definition here in a moment, but if you have a number of devices, think of just your life and then scale it up by tens and thousands, right? So, if you have thousands of these devices spread across the country, you know, how are you going to manage that? And AT&T has given you an option that now Verizon has also announced that they kind of beat them to the punch a little bit. I believe Verizon is going to be a little faster in their deployment. So, you're seeing this from the big wireless carriers. Where's the market's important? Yeah, but I think it's a real vote of confidence in the whole IoT as a business and personal, you know, enabler. Okay, so we got, I'm pretty sure we have viewers that are asking themselves right now, which is one of the questions we're going to try to answer today, and that is, what's IoT and why do I care? Right, yeah. I got to solve this. I'm trying to run my business, but I don't know what IoT is and how do I leverage it? Do I care? Well, why don't we answer it? Why don't we define it for or try to define it? Yeah, I mean, I wrote something down. So, this is something I kind of put together myself. You know, people have different definitions, and the reason the definition was so important is because I've asked several people in IT and not in IT, and there seems to be like this 50-50 split, right? So, we talk about headless devices, head devices. So, my definition, and I'll just read it real quick, is that things that interact and collect and exchange data to produce information and inform decisions to increase efficiency and or save time or money. So, when we were talking about this earlier, I'd ask you, what's your definition of a headless device? Because I think sleepy hollow. What does that mean to you? So, headless device. This is, that's a great question. So, headless device, in my eyes, means there are no, and I'm going to use a term that might be a little techy, but there are no libraries within the device that allow it to refer to displaying video. Okay. Typically, it's some kind of output to the user in a graphical, yeah, some kind of graphical representation. Okay. And by library, I mean, it doesn't know how to do it, basically. So, you know, in IT, we might say, well, can't you remote into the server? If the server is able, if the server is required to give you some graphical feedback, and it has the library local, then to me, I'd say that's probably not a headless device. Even your digital watches, I mean, I wore this thing today, right? And it's got an interface. So, I can interact with it. But if there was no interface, because there are some biometric rings, they don't have any heads to them, that's my definition. Can I tell you what Gartner says? Because I thought that was the best. I read a lot here, looking through this, it might help us here. The Internet of Things is an IT solution that collects data from physical objects, analyzes that data, and takes action to accomplish a business goal. And I think that plays right into what you're saying reinforces that. But yeah. So, we got business goals. How do we make money with this thing? Do we care? Do we appeal to, you know, there's a whole platform of IoT happening. I'm a small business owner. I'm a home user. So, we got to marry the two. The home users are probably saying, well, I want to use these things. Small business is saying, well, how do I create that relationship with these folks? So, I think that's an excellent question. And I'd like to take a minute to back up and say, you know, where is this on kind of a hype scale? Yeah, exactly. So, there actually is a hype scale. It's either Gartner or IDC publishes their hype scale. So, Gartner or one of the analyst firms have it in the next two to five years, right? And so, in terms of maturity, and actually making a measurable impact on business nationwide. But this year you say we have time? We have a little bit of time. There's a lot of cool things that you can do with it now. Okay. We're going to talk about that, I'm sure, as we go through here. Yeah. But I think, because if you ask AT&T, AT&T has been in the Internet of Things business for 10 years. Yeah. I mean, it's right there on the press release for launching that NBIOT network. Samson's going crazy. Yeah. So, it's been around for a while. But I think to your point, how do we make money on it? Or with it? Or how do we optimize our business? Nobody cares about anything unless it can make them money or save them money, right? So, how is it going to do one of those two things? I'd love to see IoT help a small business, small, medium-sized business, or any business help create a new customer. And I am interested to see how they do it. So, let's just talk really like, we're going to go to a break here in just a second. But I'd like to leave the viewers with some idea of what's an example of an IoT device? Well, you said it right away. Wearables, right? Okay. So, an Internet of Things device can be a wearable that collects your biometrics. But that collection of data, I think, is key to the IoT definition. Because, you know, you may be atypical, but wasn't the last time you really looked at your workout statistics and data, all the data that it collects on you, your sleep patterns, right? I almost never did. So, taking that data and making it actionable and meaningful, that's where IoT has the biggest potential to positively impact your business. Great. Well, we're going to take a short break, folks. I'm here with Michael Fry. I'm your host, Greg Jackson, and we'll be back in just a couple of minutes. I'm your host of New Japanese Language Show on Think Tech, Hawaii, called Konnichiwa, Hawaii, broadcasting live every other Monday at 2 p.m. Please join us where we discuss important and useful information for the Japanese language community in Hawaii. The show will be all in Japanese. Hope you can join us every other Monday at 2 p.m. Aloha. At one called out of the comfort zone. I sang this song to you because I think you either are cool or have the potential to be seriously cool. And I want you to come watch my show where I bring in experts who talk all about easy strategies to be healthier, happier, build better relationships, and make your life a success. So come sit with the cool kids at out of the comfort zone on Tuesdays at 1 p.m. See you there. All right. Welcome back. I'm Greg Jackson, your host. I'm here with Michael Fry. We're talking about IoT, what it means to small businesses, and just trying to understand what this thing is all about. And I think you're right. I think the hype is pretty high right now. So you described wearable devices. You know, we've talked a little bit about some of the argument is, you know, can be our pads or phones or PCs or those IoT devices. And we kind of went into the definition a little bit. You know, I think what you said is really, really important. I've heard some analogies like, you know, putting a device, an IoT device, say in a chair. So let's just say you're in a movie theater. And you like, here's a really great small example. You want to know which seats are available. When you book your ticket for a small fee, you can reserve your seat. They'll have the seats there. The seats will report back if anyone's sitting in it. Maybe there's an RFID badge in your season pass for your ticket or it just tells you if it's occupied or not. Right. And I mean, you could start taking that even further and say the lights are out. The movie's halfway started. But I can't find my family. So now what seats are there? Where are those seats? They're reporting back. Is somebody sitting there? Who's sitting there? I mean, it's really interesting how we want to use IoT and how it actually fits because it could be as simple as any device that just is sensing something with its geolocation on or off. We might be using it in traffic. I mean, tell me a little bit about how you envision this affecting small businesses. Sure. So I can't underscore the importance of understanding the data that all these devices are going to be sitting out or spinning out. So I heard it described as think of data, the plethora of data being produced as hot to cold. Right. So there's a lot of data bits and bytes that are going to be created by these devices. How does it get filtered into your business and how do you use that to make actionable decisions about your business? Right. So back to your movie theater analogy, is the movie theater going to use that data to optimize its showings of the latest and greatest Incredibles 2 movie? Or are they going to just sit on it and not use it? So you have to look at that data as an asset. Are you going to fully utilize it or let it sit there? And I think the answer is, let's get ready to use it. Or in your example, are you going to pass it on to the end user and let them use it to find your family? That's an important part, right? We're talking about all this data collection. Who's going to use it? And we're talking a little bit about, so some of the struggle that I think some people have is an IoT device just collecting and sending data, or is it something you actually can interact with? And I think the answer is yes to both, right? So when I think about it, I think about some of these devices that you can buy today. So let's just say, Michael, this is really great. I'm jazzed about IoT. I want to play around with it. What I would like to say is that you can probably get into an IoT device for as cheap as like 50 bucks or less. Oh yeah. There's some really cool stuff out there, being able to maybe control your lights. You know, Phillips got something out there. Now I think Google Home has a device where it's just a speaker that connects. Basically, that talks back home and it's just collecting audio, right? So all it needs to collect that audio and then send that back to a server that's going to analyze that audio. Alexa's a really beefed up version of that, but for less, I think it was about 49 bucks for that Google Home device. So now you just plug it in somewhere and you sign up for the cloud and you've got an IoT device. It's really interesting. I have a friend that will sit there at work and monitors kids at home and drop in on them with his Alexa device. You know, it's nothing but a cloud connected smart speaker and it really is an IoT device in your definition because it is headless, right? There's no way for you to physically interact with that device other than through your voice. But yeah, I think what you will see in the next two to five years, it's just going to blow our minds. Yeah. I don't think this is IoT, but one thing that's somewhat like that are those, what are they, those microphones they have in DC now for gunshots? That was an interesting concept. That was and I think it was pioneered in the Middle East and the war on terror when they were trying to navigate through the urban landscape. Where did that a shot rings out? Where did it come from? Right? It's bouncing off all these flat surfaces and getting neckled around. Having that the technology to triangulate on the gunfire is measurable. Take that into the civilian aspect. It's just going to make our law enforcement officers much more prepared. Collecting sound and then creating data with it and then responding or acting on it. That's perfect. I wrote down a few things that we probably need. I'm interested in IoT. What do I need to have an IoT device? What's really involved? Do you need internet? Do you not need internet? What I'm noticing is that there are some people that have IoT devices and they keep it contained. You've got some businesses that are, they only want to analyze their own data. So you could have RFID like stickers and those stickers can be read and they can be put into an inventory system and that could all stay within your business and not actually hit the cloud. So a couple things I wrote down was it's got to collect data. It's got to be able to communicate. You need some kind of network. I don't think the internet's necessarily required but for the cloud services it probably is. So you do need network. You need to be able to collect it. The data's got to store somewhere in the central repository and then you got to be able to analyze that data. It gets a little bit gray whether or not, are you just going to look at the data and then make it an informed decision or are you going to interact with that device? So Michael's not supposed to be sitting in that movie theater. So as text is sent out to his phone number stored and says, hey, you're off by one seat. So yeah, do you let an algorithm take over instead of having a human have to interact with that customer just have an algorithm. Yeah, you're not quite in the right seat. Move over one. Yeah. So one of the things that some examples that I wrote down, I don't know if you have any examples, but businesses or people that are thinking about IoT devices, okay, I kind of get the concept. It sounds interesting. Now we've got to get closer to the types of devices or activities that people are going to be interacting with or where's the stuff? What is an IoT device in my everyday world? And I wrote down a few things, things like your smart home devices, door locks. The whole door lock thing has really got me jazzed to give a temporary code for one person to, you know, maybe my kids home alone and Auntie comes over and I want to let Auntie in and I do, if she doesn't have a key, I can unlock the door remotely. I mean, there's some really cool stuff out there. Vehicle data, fuel. I mean, we've been collecting, one of the companies I used to work for used to measure, they used to have a device that used to measure the, I think it was OBD information off of the vehicles. Okay. It collect fuel usage, maintenance records, location. Look at UPS. UPS has been a leader in this space for a long time. They know how many times their driver turns left, how long they were in the seat, whether or not he put his turn signal on. I had some friends that worked for them and it's incredibly well measured at least. Yeah, it's supposed to lower the accident rate. Yeah, it does. It makes the driver safer and it makes our packages get to us better, faster, cheaper, hopefully. Yeah, exactly. So what are your thoughts in terms of you've got 15 years in telecom. They're interested in IoT. How would they use it? Well, let me take it back to today in a business. I think the first time a business is going to interact with the Internet of Things is going to be like you said in the security world. So the door locks, talking back, you're going to be able to see how long, Greg, was at his desk, maybe even how long he was in the bathroom this work day when he went on break. So the whole time and administration, time and attendance administration is what I was looking for, but that whole administration is going to be probably the first place we're going to see it in a big way for a small to medium-sized business. Now on the large side, I think they're already doing a lot with telemetry. Where's my package? Where exactly in the warehouses? My package you mentioned RFIDs. Those RFIDs are talking to an access point that collects that data and helps triangulate on where that is. Just think of the time that you can spend if you essentially have GPS for your warehouse, for your wrench or the item you're trying to pick up. How much time can you save? Shipping is a big deal, right? I mean, you got these RFID stickers are becoming so cheap now you can stick them on some pretty small items. And if you're collecting, they're throwaway devices at that point. They just need to be a long, unique string, and then you need to marry that to whatever the device is. Well, take that concept one step further and what a lot of companies are doing is putting these on consumables. So let's say you're running a small operation factory type of operation where you have consumables. You need X number of yards of this fabric. You want to know when that fabric's done or getting near to being done. All that can be done and sent up into the cloud and back down to you as an operations manager or factory foreman to say, hey, I need to get material there. So it affects the whole supply chain as well. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, so we talked a little bit about how we're going to be using it to I guess in the near future. What are some of your pie in the sky kind of like really far out there? Man, wouldn't that be crazy if... Oh man. Pass. No. I just see it. I guess when I think... Clothing? I mean, you see it in clothing and all that stuff. Well, of course. We were talking about RFIDs, the tags. A lot of the hotels have RFID tags in their towels nowadays. So I know... For losing them? Yes. For them walking away? Losing them. I want one to measure are you too warm and where your body's already reacting? It's going to turn the AC on before... Right. Well, that's a great point. I'm really excited about the whole smart building concept, right? Yeah. So you talk about the smart home lights. Take that and multiply it by 40 floors or 80 floors and think of the savings you could generate. I know like HMSA is a good example of a company that's moving towards this where the lights turn on when you walk into or through the parking garage, for example, they turn on as you walk through and then they go off behind you. Why are you going to burn that light when there's nobody's there, right? Yeah. So taking that, using that data and optimizing the light for your particular environment, a lot of work's being done there. How many bodies are in this room and how much light do they mean? Yeah. Taking all that into account. So just blows your mind. And I think the smart building, the energy savings that are going to come for that, that's what I'm really excited about now. Now, what about healthcare? I mean, you talked about HMSA. Let's talk IoT, healthcare. I mean... Oh, man. Hart, I think you and I were messing around just talking about, you know, this topic. And when we were talking about heart rate or what... Right, right. You know, I'm not as familiar with the healthcare space, but probably a number of people talk to that a lot better. But consumables, monitoring the patients, the glucose monitoring. I know there's even toilets that will analyze your waste for vitamin deficiencies and electrolytes being out of balance, low blood sugar, those sorts of things. Okay. So now the crazy question. Let's say we give you something for free. How do you... We're going to give you a biometric ring for free. You're going to wear it. You get some benefit from it. But I just want to let you know we're going to be sharing your data. So, and there's a lot of studies around this. I recently saw a study that said 60% of millennials would gladly share the metrics that are coming off their biometric devices if it meant that they were going to get lower premiums for their life insurance or their car insurance. You see progressive right now has the device that you can plug into your car, which is essentially an Internet of Things device, right? It uses the internet. It has no head in. It collects data and communicates that back to the cloud. But based on your... It picks up your driving patterns, how quickly you ram on the brake, how fast you ram on the accelerator, those sorts of things. And it transmits that back to progressive or whatever. How many text messages you sent? Well, now they can shut it off. Ford will shut it off for you. Yeah, this is great. So we've talked a little bit about what IoT is. Sure. We've kind of qualified it. We said that we gave the definition. We qualified some of the devices. What does it take? What is an IoT device and what does it take to be an IoT device? So we're collecting information. We are communicating it. So there's got to be some kind of way. It's either a network or an internet. We've talked about once you've collected that information, the data, how do you turn that into information and that means you have to analyze it. And then beyond that it's do you make a decision from it or do you initiate an action from it? Right. I think that sums it up for a lot of the things that we were talking about with IoT. Any final thoughts before we close here? No. I think if I was sitting across the table from a small business owner, a medium-sized business owner, I'd say keep an eye on it. But think of the... Let's see how it applies to your particular business problem right now. To the man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So there's no sense in going looking for the particular use. But as these new technologies come out and as new applications on top of the internet of things come out that make sense for your business, whether it's security or whether it's time that attendance monitoring or consumables monitoring, start to talk about that with your IT guy, your IT consultant and see where it might fit for your business and start to feature for your business. Yeah, I think it's a great idea. Well, I just want to say thanks for showing up. Thanks for having me. I had a lot of fun. Yeah, this is a great topic and I knew we'd need a little extra time to go over it. Very cool. My name is Greg Jackson, the host. And this is Michael Frye. Thanks again, Michael, for joining us. We talked about IoT. And if you have any questions, just ask them on the YouTube channel. Thanks.