Transcript 0:00 [upbeat music] Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode fifty-one of the IoT For All Podcast. 0:06 I'm your host, Ryan Chacon, and today's guest is Sanjit Pandit, the senior director of business development and head of Smart Cities at Qualcomm. 0:14 He is responsible for carrier and ecosystem relationships in the smart city space. 0:19 His expertise in the telecom industry spans over twenty plus years, and he specializes in the areas of smart city design, creation of smart verticals, digital transformation, and go-to-market strategies, creating an experience that would benefit public, private domains, and citizen engagements. 0:36 For those of you who are unfamiliar with Qualcomm, they are one of the world's leading wireless technology innovators. 0:41 They are an American multinational semiconductor and telecommunications equipment company that designs and markets wireless telecommunication products and services. 0:50 They were one of the companies to pioneer 3G and 4G, and they are now leading the way into 5G. 0:55 Their products are revolutionizing multiple industries from automotive to IoT to healthcare and security, and are allowing millions of devices to connect to each other. Overall, I had a great time talking with Sanjit. 1:06 And to give you guys a quick rundown of our conversation, well, we cover a lot about smart cities since that's where his expertise is. 1:12 Uh, we talk about different smart city applications that Qualcomm is, um, involved in, the different projects that are at the, at the top of, of cities' lists to, you know, turn their city, quote-unquote, smart, um, how smart city ROI is measured, the biggest challenges associated with smart city adoption, how existing infrastructure could be one of those challenges and how that's kinda overcome to allow smart city initiatives to be deployed. 1:35 Um, we talk about 5G and the impact it's having on the IoT space, which makes total sense since Qualcomm is heavily involved in the deployment of 5G. 1:42 Um, we also then transition and talk a little bit more about other types of connectivity options that smart cities, uh, initiatives, smart city solutions have, um, why it's not all just maybe centered around cellular and 5G. 1:55 Um, why is the collaboration so critical to the success of IoT? 1:59 So the collaboration of, of different organizations, different components, different pieces of an IoT solution in, you know, in what we know is kind of more of a fragmented market. 2:08 Um, pretty much just the emphasis of why partnerships are so critical. 2:11 Um, we then talk about the biggest key players in an IoT partnership, uh, how does Qualcomm choose their partnerships, just to kinda give some insight into what a big company kind of... 2:21 and how they think through the partnership process. And then we, we finish up by talking about what are some of the most exciting applications and deployments that Qualcomm is seeing in the smart city space. 2:31 Uh, you know, he answers questions like, will IoT have a role in helping cities manage and support their homeless populations? And what will, um, kind of... 2:40 what does he see as the most exciting developments going into 2020? So all in all, great conversation with Sanjit. Um, I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. 2:48 You know, smart cities is definitely a relevant topic now heading into 2020. It's becoming a very big initiative on the, on the front of, of many cities around the world's minds. 2:56 New, new application, new solutions being created based on the new technologies being available, the n- the, you know, the evolution of 5G, the growth of 5G, um, and other types of connectivity options making so many more solutions very, very possible, um, for s- for cities to be able to benefit from. 3:11 So without further ado, I hope you guys enjoy this episode with Sanjit Pandit of Qualcomm. Welcome, Sanjit, to the IoT For All Podcast. How's the start of your 2020 going so far? 3:24 I would say, [clears throat] first of all, thank you so much for this opportunity. 3:28 And, uh, it's 2020, I think we are extremely ex- excited for the things that are gonna come up, uh, quarter on quarter for, for Qualcomm and the smart cities, smart connected spaces. That's fantastic. 3:39 Um, I think one of the best ways to start this would be to have you give a quick introduction, um, of yourself to our audience, just kinda high level. 3:46 Talk a little more about your background, how you ended up at Qualcomm, and, and what you're doing over there. Absolutely. 3:51 Um, I am, um, for the, for the guests who don't know me yet, uh, my name is, uh, Sanjit Pandit, and I'm the head of Smart Cities at Qualcomm here in San Diego. 4:01 I run the smart city practice globally for Qualcomm, uh, to our regions and to the teams that are here in San Diego. 4:08 Um, I have been with Qualcomm, um, uh, for 20 plus years now, and, uh, I was responsible primarily, uh, in making sure that this practice becomes an integral part of the IoT, uh, overall practice that Qualcomm is in. 4:25 Prior to this, I was responsible for the Asia Pacific sales for Qualcomm chipsets semiconductor division. 4:31 Uh, I was in the mobile BU, then I moved over to the IoT BU, and I, uh, started this practice exactly about, um, a year and four months ago, um, in San Diego. That's fantastic. 4:43 Um, so I guess to catch some of our listeners up, I know most people in the IoT space have heard of Qualcomm. 4:48 Um, but could you give a high level overview of what Qualcomm does and the overall focus and kinda role it plays in the IoT space? Absolutely. 4:56 Qualcomm is one of the largest, uh, fabless semiconductor companies in the world. 5:00 As you know, we enable, um, semiconductor, uh, chipsets and technologies based, uh, that enable various handsets, and also we leverage that into the IoT space. 5:13 Our semiconductors are, um, enabling products, functionalities, devices, boxes that pretty much get deployed in the smart city arena- Okay... and the smart connected spaces. Okay. 5:26 Are there any-- I know some of this may be protected under NDA- Yes... 5:30 with your customers, but is there anything, um, uh, any smart city projects that you guys are working on, or maybe just high level kinda talk, um- Sure... 5:38 that you may be able to share with our audience so they can kind of, uh, connect something real to it? Yes. 5:43 The, the biggest success we have had, uh, since we launched this practice is something called the Qualcomm Smart City Accelerator Program. Okay. 5:50 This program, for lack of terms, is nothing but a match.com of smart cities, where we bring in, um, system integrators, uh, solution providers, governments, cities, anybody who wants to get digitization done into a platform that pretty much matches who's looking for something.A result of that has resulted into multiple smart city practices and deployments around the world. 6:14 S- to name a few would be Mexico City, uh, we are w- or we deployed, uh, with Juganu, we deployed in, uh, Rio de Janeiro. 6:23 We have done a lot of projects, um, you know, within the United States for small connected, uh, ar- areas like smart warehousing, smart parking. 6:31 It's not only about cities, but we normally call it, call it connected smart spaces. Anything, any vertical, smart vertical is what we deploy. 6:39 Internationally in Indonesia, we have signed a, uh, MOU with the city of the Sumedang to kind of, uh, roll out the 100 smart city projects. 6:48 And globally we are doing a, a lot with, uh, many, many system integrators who kind of front end these projects with Qualcomm-enabled technologies. Very cool. Okay, great. Um, 7:00 so I guess when you've had experience interacting with smart cities, um, and governments, organizations associated with them, what types of projects have been the kind of at, the top of their list, um, when it comes to potentially being adopted or deployed within a, within a city that wants to, you know, now be smart, if you will? 7:22 You know, when you buy a phone in a market, the first thing you look at a phone is you try and look at the camera. Mm-hmm. And you say, "Wow, this is a good, cool camera." 7:30 So when you do a smart city project, the first thing that comes to mind to people is smart lighting- Okay... and public city Wi-Fi. So cities have legacy systems in it. 7:41 These legacy systems, um, are difficult to kind of just throw away because that's public money. Right. They have to make sure that everything is taken into account and the new ones are adopted. 7:53 So cities are a little cautious. It's, it, there are challenges in the cities. There are a lot of privacy acts. Um, there's budget constraints. So when you come... 8:03 And if you look at the top three things that people kind of, uh, gravitate towards, it's smart lighting, public city Wi-Fi, and I would say smart parking, because this kind of ex- affects, uh, and kind of, um, intersects the human life on a, on a much tangible basis. 8:21 Okay, and then are, is there kind of a general sense of the type of ROI that governments are looking for or kind of using to measure success of smart city applications? 8:32 Well, I think, um, there's a lot of rev share models- Okay... that are going out there. Monetization is a challenge. Mm-hmm. Um, many cities don't really, uh, have a clear monetization plan. 8:45 Uh, public and private networ- private-public partnerships are in place in such a way that you hand over, um, the entire monetization right to somebody, and that particular system integrator runs the network, runs it as a service and pays back revenue to the cities. 9:01 Okay. Many cities have adopted that model as well. So yes- Okay... um, there is an ROI. Uh, I would not be able to kind of pinpoint that every city has it, as every city has a different measure. 9:12 But at the end of the day- Mm... improving human efficiency, at the same time generating revenue that kind of sustains growth in various- Mm-hmm... other verticals would be a good ROI to kind of, um, highlight. 9:24 That makes sense. And on the other side of kind of all this, there's a lot of obviously challenges in cities, um, in the process of getting a city to adopt a lot of these initiatives. 9:33 What have become, I guess, in your opinion or that you've seen in your discussions, been the biggest challenges in smart city adoption or the biggest roadblocks, if you will, that are kind of, um, causing some cities not to really, uh, take the chance on, on, um, IoT related app- applications within their city? 9:52 I think the biggest concern or biggest, um, [clears throat] uh, hindrance in my opinion is budget. That's number one. Okay. That's number one. Number two, some of the cities try to do too many things at the same time. 10:04 Mm-hmm. The best way to do many things is to do one thing at a time, you know, in this kind of s- domain. 10:09 So the best way to kind of approach this is not to kind of hash out and roll out a huge RFP that kind of requires multiple interactions and domains to kind of kick off. 10:21 The best way to do it is to kind of do vertical by vertical and slowly that kind of adds as a subset to a superset. 10:28 And how does the kind of existing infrastructure, um, play into those potential challenges and at the same time the individuals that are making the decision and they're kind of, um, 10:40 I guess, if they're t- risk adverse or if, you know, a lot of times when you work with any kind of municipality there's always a hesitation just from maybe not, uh, being as forward-thinking in technology and the importance of it. 10:51 What kind of issues have you run into kind of in those areas? Um, I think as far as infrastructure is concerned, as I said, there is a lot of legacy infrastructure in place. Okay. 11:02 Those, that infrastructure has to be accounted for. You cannot just throw that away because it's working, up and running, it's fine, so they don't really want to, um, you know, discard that or discount that. 11:16 As far as forward-looking, every city wants to do something better for the citizen. There is no question about that. Mm-hmm. The appetite is there. It is about the approach and how do you phase deploy it. Okay. Um, 11:30 uh, so one of the big things that's always, uh, been talked about for at least the last couple years is the rollout of 5G. 11:37 Um, obviously depending on who you talk to, they'll tell you how, you know, obviously there's this huge potential for it, but the, you know, how ready are we now, and when will 5G really start to play, um, an impact in the IoT space? 11:49 Um, and particularly relating to smart cities, w- how do you see the role of 5G coming in and playing a role in, in smart cities? Like, what will it enable? 11:57 What will it really do to kind of change, change the, the dynamic in the industry, um, as opposed to kind of the connectivity available now? First of all, 5G is here. 12:08 We are readyWe have deployed, um, we have kind of enabled more than 50 handsets across, um, multiple OEMs for 5G. Carriers are rolling out 5G. The biggest impact 5G will make is gonna be on autonomous driving, 12:24 uh, connected cloud, uh, cars to cloud, uh, mission-critical applications for life-saving emergencies, autonomous driving, AI. This is where high reliability, low latency applications play an important role. 12:42 5G is gonna come in and dominate that. Okay. 12:45 There will be some mission-critical decisions that need to be made, which right now the latency of 4G and the cloud computing, uh, may not be the best, but at this point with edge computing and 5G speeds coming in, those things will have a paradigm s- uh, shift. 13:02 Okay. And what kind of exposure have you had to other kinds of connectivity that are playing a role in smart city application, you know, like LPWAN, private networks? 13:10 You know, we had a guest on, um, I think last week from Nodal, and they're doing a crowdsourced, um, network through Bluetooth applica- through a Bluetooth application and basically using, uh, individual sm- uh, individuals', uh, city resident's smartphones to connect with smart devices, uh, and then upload data to the cloud. 13:30 What have you kind of seen or what are your view on other types of connectivity that are maybe playing an impactful role, uh, outside of just 5G? 13:38 I think right now there are multiple networks, like, you know, there's LoRa, there's me- mesh networks- Right... NBAT, Cat M. Yeah. I think every, every application requires a different, uh, uh, connectivity. 13:51 It's like, it's like, you know, a bike lane for bikes- Right... a truck lane for trucks. And, you know, depending upon the bandwidth and the applications, every connectivity at this point is, is independent and 14:06 gives what it needs to give for that particular application. 14:09 But with 5G coming on, it's like having a super highway where you can slice and dice that particular, um, uh, frequencies and also, uh, allocate something for mission-critical activity for, uh, you know, 911 or maybe carve out something specifically on priority basis for some kind of, uh, crowd management applications. 14:32 So yes, connectivity currently is ubiquitous in, in some way, shape, or form. With 5G, it's, it's gonna be all the more robust. 14:41 Yeah, and I think it's important for our cities to understand the kind of breadth of, of opera- or of options out there in connectivity because, you know, like you mentioned earlier, one of the biggest challenges in smart city adoption is budget. 14:52 So, um, and a lot of, um, costs associated with the smart city application and deployment is associated with the connectivity cost, you know, the ongoing cost. 15:01 And, you know, 5G, you know, may be more expensive or more kind of maybe be overkill for some s- use cases, but while others, it might be something like a private LoRa network or, um, Bluetooth may be a better fit and be more cost-effective to ho- to potentially bring down the cost associated with the project to hopefully have more IoT deployments, so then, you know, increase the value, um, of the IoT initiative within a city. 15:26 So I think it's very important for an organization or cities themselves to really understand what is out there and what's available in addition to, you know, 5G or just cellular connectivity. That's our role. 15:37 We go and educate cities on technologies. Okay. We don't, we ne- we never send an invoice to a city. Yeah. 15:43 We always go and enable them and explain to them what is coming in the roadmap, what's the best for what application. 15:50 At the end of the day, uh, what is the best practice they should adopt before they come out with an RFP that can be, uh, you know, uh, leveraged to the max in terms of connectivity. 16:01 So yes, you're right, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and all that could be cheaper, but it comes at a cost. I mean, you know, it's not gonna deliver the same bandwidth that a 5G, uh, based enabled thing would be. 16:12 And with, with technology over a period of time, cost does come down. You see a TV that cost $5,000 maybe 10 years ago, today i- is, is 50 bucks. So, you know. Right. So that, that, that... You've gotta give it time. 16:25 Oh, I, I completely agree. I mean, we're seeing that across the board in all areas of IoT, right? Hardware becoming more affordable, the modules- Sure... associated and are becoming more affordable. 16:34 Um, with all the different components of an IoT solution, price is dropping, which naturally happens, um, in any industry that's growing just based on market forces. So, so that's good. 16:43 I think that's gonna help lead, um, to hopefully a lot more adoption for IoT solutions across the board, not just smart cities, but, um, across all industries. 16:54 So the more we can do to educate, the, the better we're gonna be. 16:57 I think one of the, the hiccups, or not hiccups, one of the challenges that, that, um, a lot of people who are maybe are not familiar with the industry, uh, end up coming across is the fragmentation of the market and, um, not really putting enough emphasis on the value and importance of partnerships in bringing any type of IoT solution to market. 17:17 I don't think any one company can truly be out, go out there and try to do all the different pieces from hardware to, um, connectivity to the cloud, all the way down to the end interface. I just don't... 17:28 I, it's, we haven't really seen anyone be s- super successful in trying to own every piece of that. 17:32 So partnerships are super critical and, and one of the things that you guys mentioned before the show was how IoT is a team sport, and I'd love if you could take a second to kind of elaborate on that viewpoint that you all have and talk a little bit more in depth about why that's so important for IoT success. 17:50 You, you hit the nail it on the head. IoT is the same team sport. Absolutely, we completely believe in that. There's a lot to be done, and nobody can do it alone. That is the beauty of IoT. Fragmentation is unification. 18:04 Mm-hmm. That's exactly how we look at IoT. Fragmentation is unification. 18:09 You, you are fragmented as a standalone piece, but when you come together, the kind of cohesion it, it creates is extremely important in IoT.We are the crux of every product. We enable everything. 18:23 We are the silicon that goes into boxes. Right. 18:25 At the end of the day, at the end of the day, there has to be glue between the ecosystem and the industry that flows across top to bottom, and that was the crux of finding or forming the Smart City Accelerator Program, which I told you, for lack of terms, is a match.com of smart cities. 18:42 Yeah. 18:42 Yeah, it's super interesting that you guys, you know, really focus on that because I think a lot of companies do overlook that piece and, or they're sold by another company that they, this company can come in and do everything for them, because they don't, you know, maybe that company's a little bit ignorant to what IoT really requires to be successful when it comes to a deployment. 19:01 So aside from, you know, like, I guess I, I don't wanna say that obviously every p- p- point or every partner in an IoT solution is important, but- Mm-hmm... 19:12 in your mind, who do you think are the biggest key players in an IoT partnership, um, to, to kinda lead to success? I mean, I know everyone has a role and- Yes, yes... 19:21 everyone is important, but there's, like, you know, systems integrator you could argue are one of the most important pieces because they help bring not just education, but also experience of being able to put the solution together f- you know, uh, around the right cost and the right, um, conn- you know, technology to make this as efficient of a solution as possible. 19:39 But in your mind, who do you think are, like, maybe the one or two top key players in an IoT partnership that people really need to make sure they're focusing on and pick the right people to work with when they're kind of looking and exploring deploying something within either their organization, their city, for their own company, whatever have you? 19:54 There are two aspects to this, and there are two answers, two kind of, uh, constant answers. Okay. The biggest and the most important in my opinion is the consumer. 20:05 If the consumer doesn't adopt to the, all the technologies that get deployed today- Mm-hmm... and those things are not enhancing or being efficient enough that the life- Right... 20:15 of the consumer is changing because of deployments, these deployments- Yeah... mean nothing. You don't wanna- Okay... deploy technology for the sake of deploying technology. 20:22 You want to deploy technology for solving a problem. Okay. So identification of the problem and working backwards with the help of the consumer so that the consumer adoption is important. Yeah. That is the biggest part. 20:34 Okay. And when it comes to the, the, the main crux over here is, I would say, silicon providers, because they put in all the smarts in the silicon, the box manufacturers and the ODMs and the- Mm-hmm... 20:45 system integrators who put the solution system architecture together. Yeah. These are the main three biggest important cogs of the wheel. Yeah. Yeah, I, I definitely agree. 20:55 I think the first thing you mentioned, um, is often overlooked, and I think something else to kind of just, just note is being able to truly assess the problem, the end user, um, 21:09 and kind of work backward from that piece, and that kind of piece of information when you go down your IoT journey to find the right partners is super critical. 21:19 And even if a company may not be able to do that themselves, bringing on somebody to help them do that, I think sets them up for long-term success and avoids a lot of these pitfalls that most companies actually will come across if they kind of rush that part of the process or don't really know their end user, don't really know their problem they're trying to solve, and, and, and don't really, um, 21:36 kind of understand the ROI they're trying to look, they're kinda trying to achieve. So, so there's a lot of definitely things that need to be understood and assessed before a company kinda goes down that IoT journey. 21:46 Absolutely. I, as I said, let me give you a very classic example. 21:50 We are working, I don't wanna name the customer, we are working with a very, very critical customer for smart cattle management, in which we need to understand the temperature of the cows that are, uh, you know, grazing the lands, the location of the cows, the body temperatures for reproduction and for milk- Mm-hmm... 22:06 uh, output. And, and, uh, right now there's a very manual process where these, um, you know, farm boys, they go around with a, a manual temperature, um, uh, and, and do it manually. Right. 22:17 And with the NB-IoT, uh, sensors, it saves so much time and effort- Yeah... that they were stunned that we could do it for them. Right. 22:26 So these are the kind of problems we need to understand and really solve a issue, and this, that is priceless. It is. 22:32 When you solve something like this and you save time, effort, and you enhance somebody's life and make it efficient, that is what IoT is all about. 22:39 Yeah, and I think it's important for people to understand that every player in an IoT solution has a role, and if we stay in those lanes, I think we lead, we have the best chance of succeeding. 22:47 So for instance, in what you just talked about, the individuals who are, are kind of more on that, the, um, the side of the use case, you know, interacting with the animals and kinda working on the farms, they know the use case. 22:59 They know the problem they're trying to solve. That's right. They know who's gonna be kind of interacting with it, and they have that information that's critical to those early steps of the solution. 23:07 And then bringing in the correct partners who can help them now figure out the right connectivity, the right hardware, um, the right, um, you know, dashboard or kind of user interface that the end user is going to interact with, I think all that is super critical. 23:23 And if people really just play those, play kind of in their lanes, um, kinda in that example you just said, I think gives the best chance for success with the IoT deployment to actually solve a real problem and make an impact in people's lives and their business. 23:36 And I think that at the end of the day is the overall goal of IoT. Um- Yeah... and I think we're getting closer to being able to do that more efficiently and better across all different industries. I agree with you. 23:49 I agree with you wholeheartedly on this. Um, one of the... 23:53 I, I wanted to ask you just kind of internally just expand a little bit more on your Smart City Accelerator Program and talk a little bit more about your, your all's partnership process and kind of what you do to find the right matches and to line up the right organizations. 24:08 'Cause I think there's probably some takeaways from that philosophy and strategy that you guys have that could help other organizations out there looking to find the right pieces and the right partners to help solve their problem and hopefully lead to an, a successful IoT solution.Absolutely. 24:23 Smart, the Smart City Accelerator program is a program that is open to, um, [clears throat] companies that are playing in the IoT space. Mm. 24:32 We don't restrict it to the fact that, you know, only this kind of company or that kind of company. 24:37 We are open to companies right from people who have boo, you know, boots on the ground to antenna installers, to anybody who is playing a part of the piece of the puzzle. 24:47 Um, this advantage of doing this as a Silicon vendor is w- then we have a complete, um, ecosystem around it. 24:56 When a, when an opportunity comes by, there are a lot of states, cities, Department of Homeland Security, other organizations that go on this website and look for by s- by, you know, going to a search engine pretty much. 25:10 Uh, it's like a search engine where you can go in and type smart parking. Okay. And anybody and any- anyone, um, associated with smart parking shows up. So it's a search-based, uh, website. 25:21 It's basically the company's website onto Qualcomm's website. That's all it is. Okay. And it kind of match makes and enables you in the area or the domain that you want it. 25:31 If an RFP comes by and a requirement comes by, Qualcomm and my team reaches out to these companies proactively and creates a pseudo consortium to go after a opportunity. Okay. It gives you a r- global reach. 25:43 You may not have an office in South Africa, but you may have a solution that will work great in South Africa. Right. 25:48 And with, through this program, you will be able to reach out to the farthest of the, um, uh, opportunities, and Qualcomm will enable this, uh, f- facilitation and also making sure that the matchmaking's done in the right way. 26:02 And how are you sourcing, um, uh, any kind of vetting partners per se? Yes. There's... Absolutely. So w- um, it is by invite only. 26:12 The, the, you can go on the website, and you can, [clears throat] uh, request for being a part of it. [coughs] We go through the entire, um, 26:22 um, we go through the entire process of, um, you know, vetting the company, looking after the solution, making sure that that is something in lines with what they have claimed. Mm-hmm. 26:32 Uh, we talk to the companies prior, and then there's a proper onboarding process- Okay... uh, onto the program. So yes- Okay... it's a well-defined, well-established process that we have gone through. 26:41 Yeah, I think that's critical. I mean, I think just that vetting process is super important for that- Yes... people interest. Yes. And that is, that is, this is... 26:48 I mean, it's not for inhibiting or, you know, blocking anybody. It is to make sure that your value is extended in the right way. Exactly, yeah. E- Exactly. 26:57 I think, you know, the, there's a lot of, when it comes to any type of change in technology, kinda like we're seeing with IoT, um, a lot of organizations are very hesitant. And I think a big 27:08 piece to get them over the hump of being hesitant is, aside from just seeing other successful IoT dep- deployments, is trust. 27:16 And I think the organizations that they choose to work with, they need to trust, not just in the knowledge, but the expertise, the experience they have, the people they're interacting with, um, in order for them to r- be willing to, you know, put aside those, those fears they have about change and put money towards this and actually go down the path to, um, to build a solution. 27:37 And I think, you know, a lot of what you're doing in the early stages of your engagement with partners is playing into that trust aspect because you're bringing those people to the table, and if people trust you, they're gonna trust the people you bring. 27:50 And it kinda just is this cycle that is, I think, crucial for the success of, um, any of these types of solutions being built, especially when you're dealing with organizations who are very hesitant to do so. 28:00 Fully agree. Fully agree. Yeah. 28:02 Um, so I guess, and we talked a little bit earlier about some, some use cases and stuff, but I guess just high level, what have you, you know, in your research and your exposure to the smart city applications across the, the, the world, what are some of the more exciting, um, developments or use cases and deployments that you're seeing? 28:20 It doesn't have to be something directly related to Qualcomm, just something maybe you, you just kind of had, you know, your eye on for a while, um, that you're kinda seeing deployed around the world somewhere. 28:30 Um, uh, can you, can you rephrase that in w- what- Yeah, sure... what do you mean exactly? In- So like, so aside from, like, smart lighting and, uh, you know, smart parking garages- Oh... 28:38 and Wi-Fi, like what are some other, maybe some unique use case or unique smart city applications that are taking, taking shape- Oh, yeah... 28:45 that maybe some other people haven't really heard of or thought about that could be interesting here? Yes. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. 28:51 We have a smart aquaculture where there's, um, you know, uh, salmon farming and shrimp farming. Okay. We have something called smart winery where we monitor wines, uh, uh, grapes. 29:03 We have drones go over, look at, um, uh, with AI machines, uh, uh, intelligence, uh, look at the, uh, structure of the grapes, um, monitor the logistics, all that, smart wineries for wines. Okay. We have a smart mining. 29:17 We have something for smart cattle management, smart poultry management. So there's multiple, right? From agriculture to mining, to, um, obviously public city Wi-Fi. Most important is smart whiteboards. Okay. 29:29 It's a huge, huge push in the, in the education space, uh, uh, where we are, um, y- you know, partnering with Windows on Snapdragon-based- Mm-hmm... smart whiteboards that are getting commercialized. Interesting. 29:42 So I wanted to ask a question. This just came up from a conversation we were having at lunch today, and, and don't... if you don't have any, [laughs] any answer to it, do not, do not worry, 'cause I- Sure... 29:52 I wasn't really planning on talking about this, but I thought it was interesting now that we're talking about these interesting use cases. 29:56 But when it comes to s- big cities, let's say like San Francisco, and they have a very large homeless population, do you think there's any type of, or there will be in the future, any type of need for IoT to kinda help with that in some form or another? 30:11 I don't know exactly what that would be, whether it's like monitoring where, um, maybe homeless people are staying or spending their time, um, or anything along those lines. 30:20 Have you heard of anything related to homeless populations related to IoT?Uh, not really. Mm-hmm. I haven't, but I think, I think there is something called crowd management. Okay. 30:30 Maybe they're extending that into that kind of- Okay... um, uh, applications. 30:34 I don't know how that's gonna morph, but I think, uh, crowd management versus, um, you know, uh, uh, there's a lot of, uh, uh, you know, security related crowd management- Yeah... uh, uh, monitoring that happens. 30:48 Uh, I'm not sure if they're gonna extend that into these kind of applications or not, but, uh, maybe, maybe that's what they're referring to. Okay. 30:55 Yeah, someone, um, one of the comments that was brought up [laughs] at lunch, this is not the most appetizing thing to talk about at lunch, but it was brought up nonetheless, and apparently, like, there's a, a big issue- Mm-hmm... 31:05 in cities like San Francisco with the homeless population going to the bathroom in public places, and they're tr- and the government is- Mm-hmm... 31:10 so, you know, is trying to solve this problem, so what they're doing is they're actually hiring, um, organizations to come up and clean up that kind of stuff. 31:19 And then a- so of course, I'm in a lunch full of IoT people, and they're all brainstorming ways, well, how would you solve this problem? You know, like, putting methane monitors [laughs] somewhere. 31:27 Like, how, what would you do? Mm-hmm. So it was just really interesting, um, and it got me thinking just about kind of really unique applications for IoT, um, 31:37 in problems you don't really think IoT may play a role in because we just don't hear about it too often. Right. I mean, you know, the, um, you'll be surprised on smart lighting- Yeah... 31:47 people are putting right from sensors of all kinds of sensors to cameras. Uh, not in the US, but internationally we've seen, uh, it's like a, it's like a, it's like a hub. Everything goes in there, right? 31:58 From, uh, you know, um, uh, CO2 monitoring to everything of that sort. So yes, I mean, the, the, the, the IoT applications, the only one word that can define it- Yeah... is limitless. 32:10 Yeah, I, I, I forgot who it was, was a guest earlier, uh, or end of middle last year maybe, and they were talking about smart lighting and how, how 32:20 good of an application a s- like, a s- like street lights, street lamps are for, like, a, an IoT hub for different sensors. You know, they can, they, they, they're very high up. 32:29 They have a lot of coverage area, a lot of visibility. Um, and they just tal- we talked for a while about how, um, 32:38 how I guess important smart lighting in, uh, smart cities can be because of just how perfect they are for putting tons of different sensors and kinda using them as a hub for endless, or in your words, limitless IoT applications. 32:51 Yeah, I think, I think, um, [clears throat] it is, uh, you'll be surprised. I mean, every year at CES, MWC, there are so many IoT companies in the IoT pavilion- Right... that come up with unique ideas. 33:02 The key is how many of those ideas gets implemented and how they get sustained- True... and what is the adoption rate? Right. And that, again, comes to the point, what problem are you trying to solve? Yes. 33:14 Yeah, I completely agree with you. Um, this, this conversation so far has been fantastic. Uh, we haven't talked about smart cities really in a while here. Um, I wanted to wrap up by asking you two quick questions. 33:23 One of them is, uh, what are you most excited about going into this new year in the smart city space? Is there, you know, is it kind of the, the, you know, is it still 5G? 33:36 Is there something else that maybe we might not be too aware of if we don't work in the smart city space that we should be on the lookout for this coming year, um, that will really kinda transform things in the industry? 33:45 I think the, the two t- biggest things that I'm, I'm kind of looking forward to is AI. There's gonna be tremendous strides made into AI and how AI plays a role across multiple cross-sectional IoT domains. 33:58 And number two is the advances that are gonna happen- Okay... in autonomous driving, and that too, also because of- Yeah... AI. Okay. And 5G as underlining fabric to all this will obviously act as- Right... a catalyst. 34:10 Right, right, right. Yeah. Well, um, you know, we've been talking about 5G for a couple years now, and I, like you said, it's, it's definitely here. 34:17 It's just needs, you know, just gonna continue to grow and become to play a more important part in all different applications. 34:22 It's hard to go to any event without hearing about 5G and its, its critical, um, involvement, uh, and place that it has in the IoT space. So, um, definitely we'll be very excited to see that grow, plus AI of course. 34:36 Um, and, you know, uh, any type, anytime you get into talking about autonomous vehicles, I think most people get kind of excited and interested, um, outside of the very f- some who do [laughs] get terrified by the idea of it. 34:46 Well, any new technology takes time for, uh- Agreed... acceptance- Yep... and trust. So yes, but, uh, you know, uh, this transition has been going over right from 2G to 3G to 4G, and now even faster in 5G. 34:59 So- It'll be very- Yeah. We have to- Yes, ab- abs- absolutely. Yeah. 35:03 Um, so if anybody's listening out there that wants to kinda learn more about what you guys are doing or kinda stay up to date on what's going on over at Qualcomm, what's the best way to do that? 35:10 Well, you can reach out to, um, um, uh, the Qualcomm- Okay... 35:14 Advantage Network, and that, that would be the best, uh, and you can look up, uh, just online, right on, right on any search engine, uh, Smart City Accelerator Program, and that would guide you to- Awesome... 35:27 the right channels. Well, I really appreciate your time. Um, this has been a very good conversation. I think a lot of interesting stuff was discussed, a lot of valuable stuff was discussed. 35:34 Um, and we'll make sure we link up all these, you know, the, um, all the information about Qualcomm Smart City Accelerator Program. 35:41 Um, anything that we kinda talked about, make sure we can provide those links for our audience to, to be able to visit and learn more about. 35:48 Um, but other than that, I wanna thank you so much for taking the time to, um, talk with me today, and, uh, hopefully maybe we can have you back on sometime later this year to talk about the advances and kind of changes and developments in the smart city space and kinda what Qualcomm's doing. 36:00 Absolutely. It was a pleasure to be on, on the program, and looking forward and wishing you the best, uh, with this podcast. Thank you so much. [upbeat music] All right, everyone. 36:07 Thanks again for listening to that episode of the IoT For All podcast with Sanjit Pandit of Qualcomm. 36:12 Uh, we always love talking about smart cities here on, on the podcast, so hope you enjoyed a lot of those different talking points, questions, and the whole conversation overall. 36:21 Um, if you have not already subscribed to our podcast, we'd really appreciate it if you'd take the time to subscribe on whichever platform you're listening to us on. 36:28 It definitely ensures that you'll get the latest episode the moment they become available. Also, if you have not left a rating or review, uh, that would be a, a huge help to us. 36:36 It helps others find it, and it lets us know that you're a fan, which is pretty cool for us. 36:40 Um, but other than that, if you have any suggestions or thoughts on potential guests or anybody you'd love for us to, to work to try to get on to hear their take on the IoT industry or maybe what they're doing with their company, please drop us a line or, or, or connect with us on social media. 36:53 We'd love to hear from you, love to hear on ways we can even improve the podcast, you know, like I said, guests we could get for you, um, and any way we can improve this overall experience to keep providing you the most value possible. 37:02 But, uh, thanks again for listening and hope you enjoy our future episodes.
