Most U.S. manufacturers are stagnating in the initial stages of smart manufacturing technology adoption, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation reported Monday. Nearly 80 percent of small U.S. manufacturers “lack plans to implement Internet of Things applications over the next three years,” they said. U.S. manufacturers should leverage “smart, cyber-physical systems that combine model-based definitions, an end-to-end digital thread, modeling and simulation, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and seamless supply chain collaboration,” ITIF President Robert Atkinson and Vice President-Global Innovation Policy Stephen Ezell said with Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade Executive Director-Center for Global Industrial Strategies Inchul Kim and institute fellow Jaehan Cho.

About 29 million U.S. broadband households own a sleep tracking product, and 50 percent said they’re willing to buy a sleep technology product, such as a mattress with embedded sleep sensors or wrist-worn wearables with sleep tracking sensors, Parks Associates blogged Monday. Some 57 percent of consumers in U.S. broadband households report having at least one sleep problem, Parks said. “Lack of quality sleep can lead to a host of chronic conditions, such as depression, obesity, and dementia, which stress the resources of both consumers and the medical industry,” said Parks analyst Jennifer Kent, saying companies from startups to major IoT players are experimenting with different sleep technologies.

The IoT sensors market is forecast to reach $22.5 billion by 2023, up from $5.28 billion by year-end 2018, reported Marketsandmarkets Thursday. Drivers include increased use of sensors in IoT devices, plummeting costs, technological advancements, introduction of 3rd Generation Partnership Project Release 13 and Release 14 specifications, rising demand for connected devices and wearables and a need for real-time computing in IoT applications, it said.

Since its launch a year ago, Bluetooth mesh has been qualified in more than 65 products from silicon, stack, component and end product vendors, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group said Wednesday, saying the communications protocol is playing a role in development of the smart home and in smart building, industry and cities. The wireless protocol enables “many-to-many” device communications, positioning it for large-scale networks, it said. As an enabler of future IoT markets, Bluetooth mesh is scalable across the smart home, commercial building automation and industrial environments, said ABI Research analyst Stuart Carlaw in the release. Bluetooth mesh, along with Bluetooth beacons, "can propel these environments towards greater automation, increased sensorization, and enable valuable RTLS [real-time location system] services,” with nearly 360 million annual Bluetooth Smart Building device shipments forecast by 2022, said Carlaw. Alibaba’s artificial intelligence product development group chose Bluetooth mesh as its communications platform for the smart home on its ability to meet customers’ “scale, performance, and reliability requirements in the home,” said Lijuan Chen, head of Alibaba A.I. Labs.

Executives from Iota met with aides to Chairman Ajit Pai to discuss the company’s plans for a narrowband IoT network using specialized mobile radio, expansion band and guard band channels. The company asked the FCC to adopt the tentative conclusions in an August 2016 NPRM (see 1608180045). It's "eager to complete the construction of its IoT network but is restricted in doing so unless and until the FCC releases the channels in the EB and GB,” said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 16-261.

Global spending on smart cities will reach $158 billion by 2022, up from $81 billion this year, IDC forecast Monday. The three largest use cases, expected to attract nearly a quarter of global smart cities spending in 2018, are fixed visual surveillance, advanced public transit and smart outdoor lighting, with intelligent traffic management expected to overcome smart outdoor lighting by 2022. Officer wearables and vehicle-to-everything connectivity will generate the fastest growth, the researcher said.

T-Mobile launched narrowband IoT service nationwide, which the carrier said is the first such U.S.-wide network “and first in the world to launch NB-IoT in the guard bands for optimal efficiency.” It's based on a 3rd Generation Partnership Project standard and offers a low-power, wide-area network using LTE-advanced technology, T-Mobile said Thursday. Its NB-IoT plan costs $6 a year for up to 12 MB per connected device. “NB-IoT is the globally-preferred standard to power the rapidly expanding world of IoT applications,” said Neville Ray, T-Mobile chief technology officer. Craig Moffett of MoffettNathanson said the announcement has negative implications for Dish Network and its similar proposed network (see 1807100062). “That T-Mobile is able to construct a narrow IoT network out of guard bands seems to suggest that they believe the actual consumption of a low power wide area network will be de minimis,” Moffett wrote. “At just $6 per year, it is clear that the monetization capability of a network like this is very low … and that there is no conceivable economic model for an IoT-only network that doesn’t piggyback on the sunk costs of a network already built for more profitable uses.” Dish declined to comment.

GE Appliances launched an app that sends cooking instructions for select foods to a connected microwave oven using its Scan-to-Cook technology. Tying it to back-to-school season, GE said smartphone users can scan barcodes on packaging for items such as pizza pockets, burritos or macaroni and cheese, and “microwave-exact instructions” for cooking times and power levels will be sent to the oven. The average microwave has 10 power levels, but many consumers never change the preset, defrost or power settings, said Shawn Stover, vice president-GE Appliances’ SmartHome Solutions. GE’s Smart Countertop Microwave comes with more than 3,000 meal items preprogrammed, including frozen, refrigerated and “shelf-stable goods,” and will be updated with additional items over time. The oven is also Alexa-enabled, allowing users to stop or add cooking time without having to use their hands, he said. Beginning Wednesday, the microwave will be bundled with an Amazon Echo Dot and sold at a limited-time price of $125, down from the $139 list price.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai had little to say at Thursday's commission meeting on Dish Network spectrum beyond a letter the FCC Wireless Bureau sent the company Monday asking for details on its IoT network plans (see 1807100062). “The letter speaks for itself,” Pai said after the meeting. “We just wanted to gain additional facts.” The letter is aggressive but “in and of itself changes nothing,” New Street’s Jonathan Chaplin told investors. “We have long been of the view that the Republican majority at the FCC will have a zero-tolerance policy towards [Dish Chairman Charlie] Ergen and DISH. If the company does not meet the four corners of the build out requirement, the FCC will act to take the license away.” MoffettNathanson’s Craig Moffett said that with the inquiry, Dish is under pressure. “It’s a Hollywood-worthy script (it’s a little more complicated than a Seinfeld episode),” Moffett wrote investors. “A multi-billionaire [Ergen] is risking everything to recapture the entrepreneurial glories of his early days in satellite TV. To succeed, our protagonist will have to navigate a murderers’ row of cord-cutting, groaning debt obligations, and an FCC buildout requirement that could render some of his most precious assets worthless."

The IoT isn’t new, “it’s actually older than the internet,” and in many cases it’s overrated, said former FCC Chief Technologist Henning Schulzrinne at an IEEE 5G conference. The IoT dates to the advent 40 years ago of X10, a protocol for communication among electronic devices used for home automation, he said. “You would modulate the power line to create many of the smart home devices that we now have,” he said: “The idea and concept” of the IoT “certainly are not new.” Schulzrinne, a computer science professor at Columbia University, warned against taking at face value estimates of tens of billions of IoT devices in a few years. “Your incentive as an estimator is to pick the highest possible number, because nobody is going to ask for justification, because that’s the most likely to be cited” in industry discussions, he said. “Why would you cite a 20 billion number if a 50 billion number is available?” Schulzrinne questioned whether all IoT devices are better than what they replace. “A classical light switch is actually brilliant,” he said. “It has no power consumption. It doesn’t need to be configured. It has really good security properties, as in you have to be in the building to actually activate it, and it can be operated by a 2-year-old. The IoT, not so much.”