Vodafone says it has more than doubled its number of Internet of Things (IoT) connections in the last five years, with a heart monitor becoming the 200 millionth.
The device in question is a healthcare monitor connected by Vodafone to its IoT network which provides doctors with information about a patient’s cardiac health and certain vital signs remotely.
The first of Vodafone’s IoT devices was an in-car window-screen mounted navigation unit which was hooked up in 2009, and more than a quarter of its current fleet of devices are in Germany.
Voda says the growth is driven by organisations investing in new tech to boost productivity, strengthen supply-chains, track assets, and collect data for analysis. Examples of this sort of thing are given as IoT devices being used to track the movement, quality and quantity of coal from 200 mines across South Africa, and monitoring of water leaks and forest fires in Europe.
