Cellcom Israel has signed a memorandum of understanding with Finland-based Nokia to deploy Nokia’s environmental data-gather service, called Sensing as a Service, in Israel. The goal is to create, for the first time in the country, a real-time environmental data offering using Cellcom Israel’s existing network infrastructure. Nokia Sensing as a Service allows cell towers to deliver real-time, comprehensive environmental data including information about noise, wind, dust, air quality and hazardous gases.

Cellcom Israel’s customers in enterprise, transport, healthcare, cities and utilities can subscribe to the data and use it to build new types of services, such as real-time allergy alerts; traffic routing based on pollution levels; and city, road and park planning, including green biking routes. The sensors will provide data that will allow entities that subscribe to the service to decrease costs; for example, they could use it to align air conditioner temperatures at all sites, detecting tower and structural vibrations, and predicting sand storms.

Nokia manages the infrastructure and builds a full turnkey solution, allowing customers focus directly on their key strengths: local sales and marketing. Together with Cellcom Israel, Nokia will also deploy a blockchain-based IoT data shop that will allow both companies to increase the transparency of IoT data monetization and drive new opportunities to innovate with ecosystem data.

Tarifica’s Take

This partnership between a major Israeli MNO and a leading technology developer and device manufacturer seems like a good way to provide a wide range of non-consumer clients with an innovative data product. Environmental conditions that can be measured by sensor devices are important to the decision-making of private- and public-sector entities, and piggy-backing the sensor and data-transmission system on cellular infrastructure allows the mobile operator to offer a value-added service without significant additional investment.

With Nokia creating the technology and managing the data collection and delivery, Cellcom simply benefits from the use of its network, making revenue from the fees paid by the subscribers and, of course, from the mobile data consumed by the solution. This appears to be a relatively low-impact arrangement for the operator, it appears. The partnership should also enhance Cellcom’s brand and its standing with enterprise and governmental customers.

While Sensing as a Service is primarily a data-gathering system, it also has an IoT aspect, as the data obtained by the subscribers can be used to guide IoT-linked devices. Cellcom and Nokia’s inclusion of a blockchain-based IoT data shop indicates that the partners are aware of the importance of IoT and the need for the best information in order for it to be optimally effective. And considering the rise of concerns about climate change and its impact on businesses and municipalities alike, this environment-monitoring offering is particularly well-timed.