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BARCELONA -- Mobile World Congress 2016 -- Verizon kicked off the second day of Mobile World Congress by announcing it's opening up the company's Internet of Things (IoT) platform to third-party developers and technology service providers.
Verizon launched its IoT platform, which is called "ThingSpace," in October. Verizon currently has more than 4,000 developers using ThingSpace.
Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) said the expansion of its IoT platform would address some of the biggest challenges in agriculture, healthcare, sustainability, public safety and urban development.
Verizon's cloud-based APIs on ThingSpace are slated to be available soon for beta testing. The APIs were designed to help developers work on mobile apps that are primarily used to curate and retrieve photos, videos, music and other cloud-stored content.
With security top of mind for IoT deployments, Verizon also announced it would launch a new set of tools that were built to address those concerns across the industry.
The new IoT Security Credentialing (IoT SC) adds an over-the-top (OTT) layer of security to help developers better protect devices and applications regardless of the service provider or the type of transport that is used. IoT SC, which will be available on ThingSpace this spring, secures sensitive data at the edge of the network.
While a big chunk of IoT products and services will run on LTE networks and, eventually, 5G networks, Verizon has partnered with Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) and Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC) to build out its IoT core network, which will be finished later this year.
The IoT core network will provision IoT use cases that can run on low power and low bandwidth as opposed to other IoT applications that run on traditional networks.
— Mike Robuck, editor, Telco Transformation
