Managing fish farms with SK Telecom

Pipeline has covered some pretty interesting, unique, and innovative applications of communications technology over the years, but the latest news from SK Telecom ranks near the top. The always-innovative Korean operator is leveraging the Internet of Things (IoT) to deliver a fish farm management system at an eel farm in Gochang, North Jeolla Province.

According to the official news release, three sensors are installed on each fish tank to measure water temperature, quality and oxygen level. Then, a water quality monitoring equipment will digitize and display the data from the sensors and send them to Smart Utility Network (SUN), a new near-field communications technology, so that a gateway can collect and transmit them using LTE networks to Mobius, an open IoT platform from SK Telecom. Mobius will then send the data again to a fish tank management server for analysis and finally the users can check the tank status on their smartphones.

Eels are just the beginning; SK Telecom aims to commercialize the IoT-based fish farm management system in the first half of 2015. After applying the system to about 450 eel farms across the nation, the company plans to expand the project to different species of fish.

LTE connections reach major milestone

Currently, 4G LTE networks have been rapidly deployed around the world, even faster than 3G networks, says the GSMA. According to Ovum, global LTE subscriptions just reached a major milestone: 250 million. Interestingly, 35 percent of global LTE subscriptions are from just two service providers: AT&T and Verizon.

Super Mobility Week

Small cells were big news in Las Vegas at CTIA’s Super Mobility Week. Alcatel-Lucent announced multi-mode small cells for enterprise, Nokia Networks debuted its double-capacity small cells, and Ericsson showcased a multi-mode pico cell that supports carrier aggregation and can hit 300 Mbps. Other hot stories from the floor included Verizon’s new auto sharing app (look out Uber), an IoT app store from Raco Wireless, and augmented reality apps from SAP.