Emergency Vehicles in Smart City
Any city quality of life can be measured by its First Responders’ services.
Currently, the dispatchers are the conduit between Emergency Vehicles and the person in need until the First Responders arrive at the scene.
In Smart City that would change, as soon as the person in need contact First Responders, i.e., Fire Department, they can be directly connected to the First Responders team leader heading to the scene.
That connectivity enables the First Responders to start their work even before they arrive at scene.
Paramedic is on the way and making the first introductions in advance. The person in need is already in good hand and describing the nature of emergency s/he is facing.
The time of arrival, the specifics of neighborhood directions, etc. are all handled directly between the service provider and the user.
That type of service requires direct and intelligent 1connectivity between Emergency Vehicle and third-party mobile device.
Partner with ORTENGA to define your product in such a way that fits in Smart City.
Turn Key Solution vs. Disruptive Product
Industry trends reveal more and more Turn Key Solution, from high-tech to home improvement and sell. The high-tech industry is lowering the risk of investment by design and developing less by utilizing Commercial Off of The Shelf, COTS HW and adding FW/SW to produce a new product. This also reduces the time to market significantly by relying on the available HW and cutting the design and development cost.
Utilizing COTS HW business model implies your competitor is at most for the duration of FW/SW behind your product. That time line is in months not years if they are completely clueless about such a product, which is not a safe assumption. Assuming the competitors have similar ideas yet implementing those ideas and concept differently than your business, that timeline difference is even smaller.
Disruptive Products are based on custom made HW/FW/SW, even sometime the silicon or other sub-components are tailored for that product. The custom made HW/FW/SW business model has higher cost and much more risk in achieving the final product. Yet, if the product makes it to market, then it is a unique product. And if that unique product has appropriate feature and cost, then it is disruptive to market and no competitor exists, at least for few years.
There are lessons to be learned from companies that have tried to come up with disruptive product and came short. Let’s look at some examples.
SpaceX has tried to come up with LEO SATCOM UT since at least 2015 and still doesn’t have anything to show for or capitalize ROI. They are partnering with T-Mobile to get some market for their system which cannot be sustained by itself. Also, SpaceX is partnering with OneWeb to make revenue stream of LEO SAT investment. OneWeb solution does not rely is missing some major part of the overall LEO SATCOM ecosystem.
Kuiper project has challenges in Digital SoC and RF front end interfaces and algorithms. Amazon has yet to acknowledge their challenges and partner up.
Meta tried to do it alone in XR, and realized having lots of recent graduates and engineering resources out of college do not translate to a working product, at least not in short terms. Recently, Meta partner up with Qualcomm, veteran in wireless industry.
If your company is going alone toward disruptive product, you need lots of engineering resources which are subject matter export. If your company does not have them or cannot afford them for full time positions, the best alternative is to partner up. ORTENGA provides that alternative.
Partnering up is economical and prudent approach to reduce risks of any blind spot in your company technical expertise. For every dollar that you spend during design and development, any issues arise during the prototype phase would cost you 10x to fix and address that issue. If you only realize the issue during the product phase, it would cost you 100x to address it. Invest appropriately and choose that partner wisely.
Value of Partnership
In the competitive consumer electronics products and services, every opportunity lost to adjust and gain overcome the competitors can be costly and detrimental to the business.
The following examples illustrates even big corporations with all their resources cannot develop both vertical business and supporting technologies for their business unless partner with others.
In order for them to survive and go forward meaningful partnership is a must.
Why T-Mobile and SpaceX enter a Partnership?
T-Mobile only invested in FR1 band of 5G, in particular 3-4 GHz band and can utilize existing cell site as gNB with NR. This limits T-Mobile 5G market share to FR1 opportunities which is smaller portion of what 5G is about.
SpaceX has LEO SATCOM technology in Ku and Ka bands, yet does not have wide network of customers for SATCOM infrastructure which has designed and developed for past several years, without any meaningful ROI.
The solution is to both limited 5G market for T-Mobile and limited customer base SpaceX is partnership between them. This partnership provides additional revenue stream for both T-Mobile and SpaceX which was not possible before.
Why Meta and Qualcomm enter a Partnership?
Meta has developed XR SW and Applications platform and yet does not have SoC technology to support it XR Applications. Without control on SoC design and development, Meta cannot tailor their XR Applications to overcome competitors.
Qualcomm bread and butter business is SoC technology design and development and needs to find additional sources of business beyond Apple (as Apple MODEM SoC could be available in few short years, probably 2025). As 2025 approached, Qualcomm outlook would be fuzzier and/or weaker.
Meta and Qualcomm partnership enable both of them, the additional revenue stream that was not possible without the other.
Partner with ORTENGA to support new design and development of your product.