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March 27, 2017 Issue

CEOCFO MAGAZINE

 

End-to-End LoRaWAN IoT Solutions, Sensors, Gateways and Apps for Low Power, Low Range, Wide Area Networks used in Smart Homes, Smart Buildings, Agriculture, Supply Chain, Asset Tracking Intelligent Building, Smart Cities, and Smart Meters

 

 

Hardy Schmidbauer

Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder

 

TrackNet, Inc.

www.tracknet.io

 

Interview conducted by:

Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor, CEOCFO Magazine, Published – March 27, 2017

 

CEOCFO: Mr. Schmidbauer, what is the concept behind TrackNet?

Mr. Schmidbauer: TrackNet is a company developing end-to-end IoT solutions for low power, wide area networks. The premise of what we are trying to focus on is what we call the inside out deployment model. We are utilizing really low cost, indoor, in-building picocells to deploy the networks rather than taking a pure tower based approach and targeting the industrial sector, we view the inside out model has a much more attractive ROI and is something that is much more scalable.

 

CEOCFO: Are many people taking that approach?

Mr. Schmidbauer: I think many people are starting to realize the attractiveness of this approach. A lot of early adopters in the LPWAN space were targeting the tower based model and the industrial sector, but are now struggling with the ROI and starting to realize that the inside out model is potentially a much more attractive ROI approach. We are starting to see some companies with access to infrastructure and consumers in the large geographies deploying LPWAN networks   instead of the Telcos. You start to see companies like Comcast and other broad band companies doing the network for that reason of the more attractive ROI of the inside out model.

 

CEOCFO: Who is using your services today?

Mr. Schmidbauer: The first solution that we developed is Tabs (http://tabs.io). That is an all in one solution for consumers about the safety of their family and home. We just launched it at MWC and are planning to partner and utilize the Telco operators and other broadband companies that are deploying lower networks as the channel for that solution. Tabs provides an all-in-one solution for consumers for locating their children throughout their daily lives, the security of their home, the home environment including harmful gases, Wi-Fi parental controls, and Wi-Fi security. 

 

CEOCFO: Do you see eventually just about everyone having some kind of security system?

Mr. Schmidbauer: I think so. I think it also depends a bit on the country and the geography, but I think if you look at the US market, I would say yes. I think that space, like many industries is changing rapidly. I do not think there is a lot of value anymore to the traditional call center. People are so well connected these days that they can just as easily call 911 as someone sitting in a call center. If you are out of town or on vacation you can have the alerts redirected to your neighbors, family, or friends. If you start to remove the call center features and the need for cellular as the back call, these solutions start to become much more affordable and I think can serve a broader portion of the market.

 

CEOCFO: You introduced Tabs at the conference; how will you be promoting it to potential users?

Mr. Schmidbauer: Right now, especially for outside of the US, we are mainly partnering with operators and others that we can leverage as a channel who already has a consumer channel set up, the marketing, and the brand to bring Tabs to market. For the US market, we are still considering to go directly to consumers ourselves, but open to a partnership, which we are discussing with a few different market leaders.

 

CEOCFO: Are there certain countries or areas of the world that are more receptive in general?

Mr. Schmidbauer: There are some cultural aspects which make Tabs more or less attractive in different countries. In countries like Singapore, an extremely safe country with not a lot of crime, Tabs is somewhat less attractive for that market. I would say of you look at the large geographies, whether that is the US, Europe, or most of the Asian countries, everyone has interest in the Tabs type of benefits and offerings.

 

CEOCFO: What is involved in implementation from your end and from the consumer’s end?

Mr. Schmidbauer: We are using a Wi-Fi plus long range communication (LoRa) hub to give sensor coverage over entire neighborhoods from a single hug. From the Wi-Fi perspective, it is a full 802.11ac router that can replace the existing router in the home or it can be utilized as a Wi-Fi extender. We offer parental control, so filtering by categories for a device connected to the router and we also offer an IoT security feature which checks the security of other Wi-Fi connected devices inside the home. That is the main kind of hub that is utilized. The rest of the devices that you want to connect whether that is through window sensors or trackers, or healthy home sensors which monitor the temperature, humidity and the air quality inside of the home. Those are very easily provisioned through the mobile app into your system.

 

CEOCFO: Is there any concern about security and someone being able to hack and invade your privacy?

Mr. Schmidbauer: Security is critical and it does concern us. I think it concerns consumers in general, so it is important. We are implementing an IoT security feature on the Wi-Fi router that will monitor the traffic and if all of a sudden it sees large amounts of data going to Russia or the Cayman Islands. It will give you an alert that your home Wi-Fi network has been compromised. I think giving consumers that piece that their home network is secure as part of the Tabs offering. For the long range sensor devices security is built into the protocol with different levels of encryption and we have also added other layers of security in addition to the standardized LoRaWAN protocol. 

 

CEOCFO: What are the challenges in developing the system that you have or is it more figuring out that it was a good idea to do?

Mr. Schmidbauer: The LoRa portion of Tabs gives you that long range coverage. A home hub can cover an entire neighborhood. That allows us to do the applications such as locating kids around the neighborhood and all the different hubs are collaborative. If my neighbor or friend a few blocks away installs the solution or one gets plugged in at the daycare, all users benefit from that coverage. Network coverage is also built into the mobile app and consumers have control at low price point of where there is coverage. In that model, you are talking potentially hundreds of millions of hubs, which can all tie back into one central core network. Developing that core network with vast scalability was one of the main challenges and one of the main intellectual property components that we have inside TrackNet.

 

CEOCFO: How do you need to maintain the system and what are the challenges and how do you plan to quickly fix any problems?

Mr. Schmidbauer: Today we are using AWS and we are distributing the core network management across many different AWS centers just to have redundancy in case one AWS centers goes down and it can be automatically picked up by an AWS center in a different region or we can switch over control automatically to a different data center. That is part of the solution and part of the IP what we have developed is having that amount of redundancy so that we do not have outages in the networks and in the data centers.

 

CEOCFO: Are you funded for your next steps?  Are you seeking investment or partnership?

Mr. Schmidbauer: We raised seven million initially. That gives us some runway. I will not say that we will not need more money. It depends on how fast we want to scale out. We are dealing with hardware and depending on the traction that we get for Tabs with the operators that we sign, we may need more capital for managing the working capital of the hardware.

 

CEOCFO: What surprised you as you have developed the offering?

Mr. Schmidbauer: I surprised by the reception and acceptance we have with the inside-out deployment model, even from operators who originally architected a tower based deployment. Everyone is struggling with the ROI of IoT which is not because the volume is not there it is because everyone originally targeted the industrial sector and this sector always takes much longer than everyone expects or wants to reach volume. Industrial verticals have complicated and long development and qualification cycles and then their sales cycles are also long. I think everyone is realizing that consumer, smart building, and facility management is maybe a much faster way to get revenue out of IoT.

 

CEOCFO: Why is this the time to pay attention to TrackNet?

Mr. Shmidbauer: IoT is the next big market. I compare it to the early days of the internet and I think it is the right time and place to develop the IoT solutions and deployment model that TrackNet is developing to capitalize on the boom of the IoT market.   


 

“I compare it to the early days of the internet and I think it is the right time and place to develop the IoT solutions and deployment model that TrackNet is developing to capitalize on the boom of the IoT market.”- Hardy Schmidbauer

 

“Tabs provides an all-in-one solution for consumers for locating their children throughout their daily lives, the security of their home, the home environment including harmful gases, Wi-Fi parental controls, and Wi-Fi security.”- Hardy Schmidbauer

 

 

TrackNet, Inc.

www.tracknet.io


 


 

 



 

 


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