Published on the 29/06/2015 | Written by Donovan Jackson

The tech industry is notorious for misunderstandings, blurred definitions and, perhaps above all, three letter acronyms (TLA)…

Consumer electronics retailer Noel Leeming has claimed in a press release that it is ‘now making the Internet of Things even more accessible to everyday households by allowing customers to purchase a broadband connection at the same time they are looking at new devices’.

That’s an interesting way of saying ‘Noel Leeming is selling broadband in-store’ and further commoditising connectivity.

CEO Tim Edwards expects broadband to be increasingly bundled with Smart TVs, home security systems and Wi-Fi enabled devices. To do that, it has partnered with Spark and My Republic to offer connectivity through its 70 stores around the country.

In its rush to hype a new TLA, it seems to have escaped the industry as a whole that smartphones, tablets, laptops and other devices are already ‘things’ connected to the internet, either via home broadband, the office equivalent or a mobile data package. In other words, the internet has always been about things.

Adding few extra broadband connections into an already saturated market (Cisco country manager Geoff Lawrie recently pointed out that everyone in NZ who wants connectivity pretty much already has it) and hooking up TVs and other appliances won’t account for the explosive growth suggested by the Internet of Things (IoT), which consulting firm McKinsey recently said is likely to be a multi-trillion dollar business by 2025.

Further perspective comes from Gartner, which said there were around 3.9 billion connected things by 2014. It estimates that number will go up to some 25 billion by 2020.

While those internet connected appliances may be a part of the IoT, it will be an almost vanishingly small component. The IoT is, therefore, not likely to be a consumer play, but one which is driven by business to business connections and those are more likely to come from embedded sensors which communicate small amounts of very specific data. These sensors will be deployed across a variety of business types: media, environmental monitoring, infrastructure management, manufacturing, energy management, medical and healthcare systems and transportation. Building and home automation is, however, included.

In a recent interview with iStart, Cisco’s Lawrie said that while “Machine to machine connections will account for over 60 percent of connections in New Zealand by 2019, it will only account for around one half a percent of traffic.”

In Noel Leeming’s press release, Spark GM Jason Paris made a point: “The coolest thing about the IoT is it’s actually not only about ‘things’, or even about technology – it’s more about the people, and the amazing experiences a connected world will bring us.” Much like the way all the things connected to the internet to date have in one way or another contributed to convenience, efficiency or entertainment for people.

In its 2014 ISP survey, Stats NZ said there were 46,000 fibre and 1.3 million DSL connections out of a total of a total of 1.98 million connections. It also said 3.7 million internet-connected mobile phones were active in the three months to June 2014.

There are 1.5 million households in the country, lending credence to Lawrie’s assertion on the maturity of the market for consumer connectivty.

Be that as it may, Noel Leeming’s Edwards said: “An estimated 300,000 to 400,000 Kiwis will get broadband packages at home for the first time or will switch from their current broadband provider and many think it is difficult, but it doesn’t have to be.”

Quizzed on that, the retailer’s PR representative said the estimate was drawn from Commerce Commission figures which said there were 1.39 million connections as at 30 June 2014, up from 1.32 million in the previous year (note the discrepancy with Stats NZ figures). The 70 000 new connections made in the last year, it said, could be added to ‘today’s churn rate of 15 to 20 percent. The churn rate is a combination of qualitative store experience [and] conversations with industry. And with choices growing as Fibre makes customers reassess options [and] more options available, that’s why we have put in between 300-400 000’.