David Palmer is the Blockchain Lead and IoT at Vodafone Business, In this podcast we discuss the convergence of blockchain, 5G, AI and IoT (Internet of Things). In addition, we discussed the evolution of internet of things to internet of value and some of the exciting work Vodafone is doing in this space from Smart Cities, to supply chain and to the Energy Web Foundation.

David has been working in the telco sector for the last 20 years. He has worked on broadband, ADSL rollout, satellite broadband and for the last 10 years on IoT including combining it with blockchain for the last 4 years.

 

What is blockchain?

Blockchain is a distributed ledger that is shared between different parties. When you combine that with transactions you get to the basis of the first use case of blockchain which is Bitcoin. Bitcoin demonstrated how you can build trust by having transactions written on a shared and distributed ledger where different parties validate the transactions and provide its security through their combined computational power.

David notes that this is a simple definition of blockchain. Over the last three years there has been an evolution of blockchain. On one end you have public blockchains such as Bitcoin, Ethereum versus private blockchains with permissioned access formed by consortiums. Issues of interoperability arise when you try to bring those different blockchains together. In addition there are different protocols and consensus mechanisms that come in to play from DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph), proof of stake and proof of work.

Blockchain is a continuously evolving technology, but at its core it is a technology about trust. David mentions that there is a lot of friction today in everyday process. These are essentially processes built to establishing trust. The real power of blockchain is in providing a trusted shared platform to automate those process to remove that friction. Blockchain’s role in digital transformation is in the removal of the trust issue, it’s in the automation of processes which will give rise to a new evolution of automated business models and processes.

 

Explosion in IoT devices

Source: Statista

Statista is forecasting end-user spending on IoT solutions to reach $1.6 trillion by 2025 from 21.5 billion IoT devices. These are staggering numbers! With the increase adoption of 5G these IoT devices will be able to provide large amounts of data within nano-seconds.

Vodafone has a Global IoT platform called Global Digital Services Platform (GDSP). This platform is at the very heart of the IoT offering to Vodafone’s customers, and is also offered as an IoT platform to other Telco’s. The GDSP provides all the management facilities for customers and channels to manage their individual IoT SIM estates.

Vodafone has been a leader in IoT for the last 10 years as recognised by