What Enterprises Need to Know About SGP.32

Hi. This is Nick Earle, CEO of Eseye, and welcome to this episode of IoT Leaders podcast. This is an unusual one. Today, we're talking about SGP thirty two, yet another acronym, from the telecom industry. But in this case, it's one that is actually pretty important to a lot of people. There's a lot of people asking questions about SGP thirty two. Is it the holy grail? Does this solve all the issues I've had with my IoT deployment? There's a lot of start ups, who are building next generation MVNOs around SGP thirty two, and there's a lot of companies who were experimenting. So what we decided to do is is to really, help people understand, what it is, what it isn't, what it's capable of, what it's not capable of, where it is, and where it's likely to go, and, advice on on on how to move forward and do do the assessment. Because we know that eventually, it's gonna be hugely important. But the fact is, as you'll hear in the podcast, from, Matt Hatton, who runs Transformer Insights, a frequent guest on this podcast. And as you'll hear, the hype in this case has definitely got ahead of the, reality. So this is a a bit of a, a reality check in terms of, what's there. And, if you really don't know what SGP thirty two is and you think I need to get myself educated because people are asking me internally than this podcast, hopefully, will be, helpful for that. All of this, as you'll hear, at the beginning when we get going, is available as a white paper on our our website. You just search for SGP thirty two, and you'll find the white paper that this, IoT Leaders podcast is based on. So with that, let's get going. And, I'll introduce my guest, Matt Hutton, who's the founder of Transformer Insights, one of the leading research firms in the IoT space. Here we go. Matt, welcome to the IoT Leaders podcast again. Thank you. Delighted to be here. I think I I was wearing a rather, less conservative, shirt when I was on the podcast. And then most people, listen to this, so most people will be bemused by that comment. But some people do watch the YouTube video, and so I can explain it to everyone. Yes. I I remember being startled myself when you seem to have a a very exotic golfing shirt on it or you're pretty particularly adventurous that day or something. I don't know. What what wasn't deliberate? It must have been the middle of the summer. Well, it's the middle of the summer now, but, I don't think we've got anything to, to be too, no. Not with the weather that we've got in the UK right now. So let's get back to the, podcast. Listen, there will be some people who know exactly who you are, and you're standing in the industry. But there will be some people saying, who is this Manhattan guy and, who are, a transformer? So let's start off with the basics. Just just introduce yourself and, and your in your company to the, to the listeners to the podcast. Of course, I can. Happy to do that. Matt Hatton, I'm one of the founding partners here at Transformer Insights. We're a, I guess, boutique research and consulting firm. You could describe us as majority of what we do is focus on the Internet of Things. We look at some other disruptive technologies as well, AI and blockchain and a few other things, but probably eighty percent of what we do is IoT. And within that, my particular focus is on all things related to connectivity. So whether that's access network technologies or what the communication service providers are doing or devices or, indeed, things to do with remote SIM provisioning and and, and such such topics, which is where we're gonna go. Exactly. A neat little segue into, in A neat little segue. Thank you. I was telling Matt before the recording on the podcast, we we have, sponsored a white paper, which has been written by Matt, on, today's subject, which is SGP thirty two. And I was saying that I put out a a LinkedIn, post, and I got, between three and four times the number of views I normally get Mhmm. My LinkedIn post. So, clearly, this is a subject, that is has got great interest and, you know, people were, really interested in this in this topic. So before we start, here, get into it, everything that we're going to be talking about on this is actually in a white paper that was sponsored by SI written by Matt. And, it's part of a transformer series of, transformer transition, topics. If you go to s I dot com, e s c y e dot com, and, just hit search and then type in s g p space three two, you'll get the transformer, insights white paper, which goes into a lot more detail, on what we're about to talk about. So we know there's a lot of interest. We know there's a lot of confusion. That will be a theme of this podcast. There's certainly a lot of confusion. There's people making mistakes, and there's people overpromising, significantly in some cases. So we're gonna try and uncouple that and get to the recommendations. So let's, start at the, at the beginning. And, Matt, can you just do briefly get us going, what is SGP thirty two? I know it was announced in May twenty twenty three. Mhmm. What is it? Yes. Happy to to to talk through that as as a as a little, prelude to that. It it did send me thinking just as you were doing that that intro that, you know, there's normally this maxim that people buy, services rather than buying technologies, or people don't buy technology, they buy what that technology can do for them. But it's quite notable that, you know, you you don't get a much more obscure technical term than SGP thirty two, which is entirely transparent in terms of of of what it is and what it what it might do when I I use the phrase advisedly. But yet we, and I'm sure you've seen the same thing, have had a lot of enterprises, hearing about this technology, seeing it's it's becoming available, and being very interested in what it can do for them in terms of their global cellular based IoT, connectivity deployments. And so in a way, it's one of the ones one of the instances where the technology has kind of go ahead ahead of things, which is pretty interesting to see. But Yeah. Let's take let's take it back. Back in the back in the mists of time, about ten years ago, there was really no way to change the SIM profile on a device other than switching out a plastic SIM. And then so as a just let let me, let me just note that I'm gonna have to go through a few processes along the way before I get on to talking about what thirty two is because there's kind of a bit of a a a windy path. Journey here that we need to map out. Yep. Yeah. Exactly. A bit of a windy path to get to get to thirty two. But, anyway, so so you start with the fact that as of around about twenty, fifteen, you got you started to get, embedded SIMs, sold in SIM cards, machine form factor SIM cards being put into devices, which were which were very useful because they were much more robust, much more secure. You can have people steaming them quite as easily, although still still possible. So effectively, that SIM element was soldered into the device, great for coping with extremes of temperature and and vibration and so on. So much more appropriate for for IoT deployment. Problem with that, of course, is how do you move operators? How do you change operators if the SIM has been soldered into the device? Well, you have to introduce a mechanism for doing that, and the mechanism for doing that is something called remote SIM provisioning. And as a part of that process of introducing remote SIM provisioning, the GSM Association developed a series of standards, under the umbrella of SGP, the first being SGP two. That was the m to m standard for for remote SIM provisioning. That one was in twenty fourteen. Then we saw SGP twenty two, which was the consumer variant, which came out in twenty sixteen, and then the SGP thirty two variant, which is what's termed IoT, it came out in well, last year. Initially, the, the the first specifications came out last year, but we'll get on to discuss something around the the timing in a little bit. So, effectively, you've got three standards. These three standards that were introduced or or in the process of being introduced by the the the the first one, SGP two, was, based on a profile, an eSIM profile, being pushed by a service provider to the device. So it requires both the, it requires the integration of the the donor provider and the recipient provider, so that the credentials can be handed over between the two, effectively migrating agreeing to migrate that that device from from operator a to operator b. The consumer variant, s t v twenty two, which which followed it, is a pull variant. I the user can say, I want to pull a profile from whichever my chosen provider is, rather than relying on the, the existing provider to send it. So they they can pull it themselves. They have they have, increased freedom to to do that. But what was realized was that the SGP two variant was a little bit clunky, and the SGP twenty two one was really only appropriate for consumer devices because SGP twenty two needed a an advanced user interface. There were some limitations in terms of, what technologies it would work with. It needed SMS, for instance. And so it was decided that what was really needed was a to do an enhancement on SGP twenty two to make it appropriate for IoT. So you put an agent onto the onto the device, the the IPA, the the, IoT profile assistant. Yep. Think I'm I'm I think it is. I'm missing a word out there, but, one of those jumbled acronyms again. And that that acts effectively as if it was the the user. So, selecting to pull down the profile from whichever was the the chosen provider. So that's how SGP thirty two works well. That's a very, very brief version of how SGP thirty thirty two works. It represents quite an improvement on both of the previous standards. So we've had some people describing it as kind of third time lucky for, for for these, remote SIM provisioning, standards. In as much as o two required agreement and cooperation and integration between the two carriers. So it was a bit clunky. Twenty two required the user actually to be present and taking photos of QR codes or or or whatever, Whereas thirty two allowed that to all to be done remotely. It also supported lightweight protocols. There wasn't a requirement for SMS, and the, the footprint of the of the the LPA was much more, was was much reduced because actually part of it had been taken off the off the device. So it's a it's a lighter weight, standard than than the two that that had come before, which is obviously good in constrained, deployments. So there we go. That was, a a nice explanation of of, as we said at the the beginning, a complicated subject. And and if I can, I'll give the the view of SI as a as a as a managed service provider in the IoT space with a lot of global customers. Customers, if you mean if you're in IoT, you know what the issues are in terms of being locked into an operator. Multi MC roaming gave them some freedom, but not complete freedom. And so SGP thirty two on the surface sounds like, as you say, third time lucky, wow. This is great. You mean my SIM can now basically connect to, anybody? Because if it's an industry standard, everyone will adopt it. I can connect to anybody, and and and, actually, I now have full freedom and therefore full connectivity. And therefore, everything will now work, and all those issues that have held back IoT adoption are going to go away. And in fact, what we've also found is that, because the SGP thirty two, and we'll get into the fact of of whether the standard is actually there yet. But but, SGP thirty two, there are, you know, early versions of the standard have been publicized. There are a lot of people who have got some very slick demos, And they will show you, look. Here's the SIM connected to operator a, drop down menu, but, you know, which one would you like? Click. Oh, look. Here's the SIM connected to operator b. Why don't you have a go? You know, you see it. It shows. Oh, click click click. I've suddenly freedom. Freedom. I can do whatever I want. And, and it looks great. And the demo looks very slick. And, we all know in the industry, and, I'd like you to comment on this, that ultimately, if you look forward I mean, SGP thirty two will clearly be the dominant, RSP, remote sim provisioning methodology. But the point about this podcast is around the realities of what's required right now and the recommendations on how to go forward. Because at the moment, the there's a big difference, isn't there, Matt, between the, the demo and the promise and what customers are actually seeing even though we think that ultimately this will become, the majority of, the majority way in which, devices will be connected. Yes. Completely. So my comments about it being great, I would stand by it, is an improvement in in many ways on the on the other standards that that came before solving some of the, issues that that that came from those. And as you say, it will become the dominant standard. Not exclusively. There are many scenarios where, actually, some of the other alternative technologies might be more appropriate. I think probably, connected carmakers will will probably be perfectly happy with SGP two still working as their as their chosen form. Many consumer devices will be happy with with twenty two. But we think that of the, we've we've done some calculations. We published a report last year where we looked at the the total opportunity associated with this remote SIM provisioning, and we we came up with a figure of two point three billion, IoT cellular connected devices will be remote SIM provisioning capable by twenty thirty two, and the majority of those will be SGP thirty two. So dominant dominant technology, in in the field, certainly. But there are a couple of fairly healthy buts that we need to to think about. One's about timing. As you say, this this technology actually isn't available today. Okay? The the the standards, were, more or less finalized last year. There was, some work to be done on certification. There's still a few things to be to be ratified. And so, effectively, we're not expecting devices and full SGP thirty two k thirty to be around until probably early next year. So if anybody is putting in front of you a SGP thirty two offering and you're not listening to this sometime deep into twenty twenty five, by the way, which I'm sure you've got a lot of people who go back through the, the the the long tail. There's a long tail of Exactly. I'm listening back to the, the the repertoire. So if you're not listening to it deep into twenty twenty five, the the chances are what you're being presented with is a better be a prestandard, SGP thirty two, which is simply SGP twenty two with a with some proprietary, additional elements. Now it probably does work in more or less the same way as SGP thirty two, but without that interoperability and, actually removing the the one key big benefit of thirty two, which is the ability to move between any operator because it's based on the standard. So, effectively, you're more or less tying yourself into a a nonstandard approach, although one where there's likely to be a a an evolution part. But just to set a set a reality check on that to say, it it is not available today, and what you're getting is not quite SGP thirty two. Thirty two. It's twenty two with the skin. And and I mentioned and we're gonna go through seven, I think seven points. Again, saying that we know eventually we're all going to get there, but this is about helping people and not make mistakes. And and, as I said, we have several customers who have said, oh, my word. I've gone too fast, too early, and and then had to, you know, start again. This first one actually is the demo point, isn't it? Is that and if if people think well, they're listening to this at the, you know, the picture of a iceberg. You know, this is the bit above the water, which is I call the demo. It looks great. Mhmm. And the demo is actually twenty two with a skin on it, and it it looks absolutely wonderful. I mean, you know, but the reality is it it's it's not there yet, and it's not full, it's not full, thirty two. So sort of, you know, caveat tempt caveat emptor, but, you know, buyer beware. There's There's a few more questions you need to ask, when considering it. So, the and as you said, the standard, the the GSMA standard, is not fully ratified yet. So there's always a bit of a risk there. So so it's not an either or, is it? Because what you seem to be saying is that it it's it's it both are going to just as two exist today, three will exist in the future, it it it it and for IoT devices where o two SGP two or SGP o two is the dominant form of RSP today, and thirty two is coming along. It seems like what you're saying is whatever happens, it will be a managed transition, Matt. Yes. Well, there there's a few aspects to this. One is it may be that s g b thirty two isn't actually the most appropriate technology for you to use as a as a buyer of connectivity. Right? Maybe SGP two is more appropriate. Maybe a multi MC, approach. Maybe a single MC CME. You know, if you're only deploying in one country, maybe you maybe you don't need this this technology. So probably the best approach is find somebody who can sort you out with whichever is the most appropriate Right. Appropriate technology to use rather than, kind of assuming that this is a a universal, panacea that's that's that's gonna solve every every issue. There's another there's another topic. Several other topics related to this, this it being a managed service is, it it might offer companies the opportunity to take their connectivity from whoever they like, but are you realistically gonna go out and negotiate, connectivity arrangements with dozens of different carriers? Maybe some companies will. Probably. I suspect most most won't. The carmakers probably would. Most others probably wouldn't. And and so most naturally, you will want somebody to handle that that that relationship or that that that negotiating approach, for you. There's also, there there are other things going on in the background as well. So simply switching the network operator is only part of the the the process of of of how you manage the the the connections. If you switch from operator a to operator b, can you be sure that your, SLAs will still be comparable? Are you sure that your APN settings have all been done properly? Are you sure that your local breakout is happening in the way that you want it to? And so simply which eSIM profile happens to be on the device is only part of the part of the requirement. So there's, there's an aspect. And there's also the the time aspect that that we've kind of alluded to during the, the the the conversation already, whereby thirty two might not be available today, and so you might be implementing something which maybe it's a prestandard one, maybe it's SGP two, maybe it's a multi IMC approach, but at some point, you probably want to evolve to SGP thirty two, if that's appropriate. And having somebody to help you manage that process of of, of of evolving from one to to another is obviously, an important thing as well. And I probably missed something there, Nick, but that Well, I was gonna say I I was actually gonna bring it to the APNs because we've certainly, had some cases where, people have gone early. And and we, you know, full disclosure, we're we're a managed service provider that offers, SGP two, SGP twenty two, SGP thirty two, and a managed transition. We'll get back to that. So we're offering the full range. But people have gone pure SGP thirty two. And, and then we've said, oh, well, hold on a second. You know, back to the iceberg. The APN seems to keep on changing, and and maybe you can comment just briefly on that because one of the one of the things under the water level, is that, as you said, it's not just about I mean, whether it's push or pull from the profile into the SIM. I mean, that's that's above the water level. But but the you've also got to make sure that everything else in the infrastructure works. And one of the critical components is the APN's got to be consistent, when it, switches. And another one, if I can give you two to, comment on. And I guess you've also got to be sure that the operator that you were on knows that you've left so that they don't continue billing you? Well, this is an interesting one. So sec second one first. We we work with a lot of telcos, and one of the things that actually has come up quite quite recently is, how do you how do you deal with that? The fact that there is no mechanism for alerting or no sorry. No requirement for a mechanism to alert the, the the donor, provider. So you might be moving your connections off operator a onto operator b, but you also need to send them a letter and say, I want to cancel my contract. I need to you know, for for these connections and and and so on. So there's a bit of a logistics, exercise in involved in that. Doesn't apply with STB two, incidentally, there. I I think there's a there's a notification process. Well, there has to be a notification process because it's a it's a it's a two way handover. So that does complicate things, a little, shall we shall we say. But the APN setting, I mean, not much to add to to to what you what you said. And and not just, APNs, really. I mean, there's a there's all sorts of things that you need to ensure work in the background where the data flows are happening, where where you're making sure you're compliant with, the requirements in any in any given territory. The, things to do with, I mentioned, to do with SLAs and security and and and so on. Really, the as you say, the e eSIM profile is just the tip of the iceberg as as far as the the connected device and the, you know, getting getting data from point a to point b is concerned. And and increasingly, we we have this conversation with a lot of a lot of connectivity providers. You can't just think about it as the as the IoT connectivity. It it is, the concept really of device to cloud. So taking data from a device and delivering it to the the cloud in in a, in a seamless a way as as possible and and compliant. I'll throw that one in there as as well. And this is kind of that, evolution in in microcosm. The connectivity piece is the easing profile, but there's a whole bunch of other things that that that sit around in terms of effectively providing device to cloud, whether that be APNs, whether that be security, or whether that be, local data breakout or or or whatever that need to be, set appropriately for the for the deployment. Yeah. And and that's gonna bring us into, we're sort of shining a bit of a dull light on it at the moment, but there is a a path. There will be a the bright light version, coming here. But, one one last thing I I toss onto the table is that what we see at least is that people saying, well, I'm going we said, why do you wanna go s g p thirty two now as opposed to a managed transition? Mhmm. And one of the things that they say is, oh, because I'm gonna save money. I'm going to save money with this. Mhmm. I I I think you've, you've come across that as well. And we're not sure that's actually true, are we? No. I mean, who has the best negotiating power with, network operators? Is it an individual company on their own trying to negotiate for connectivity need of twenty different countries with different, providers, or is it a connectivity provider? MBNO or MNO, I mean, it's not it it doesn't necessarily have to be have to be an MBNO, but companies who negotiate the connectivity for millions of of devices are invariably gonna be able to secure a more, price effective solution, should should we say. There there are some exceptions. I mean, if you're doing millions of devices in a given market if you're if you're doing a smart meter rollout, for instance, okay, you can probably go get direct to the carriers, and you can probably get a get a pretty decent, deep and so you may want to eliminate a a a a middleman, say. But if what you want is ten thousand connections or a hundred thousand connections globally You don't have the negotiation leverage and You you don't. You don't. Just because you're using one RSP tool. Okay. So we talked about the sort of buyer beware, but we've also said that, look, this is a an improvement, and and it will, we believe, ultimately, become the main one, not the only one, but the main one. But but key to that, I think, is the next stage I'd like to go to in this discussion, which is if you're following along is in the it is also in the report. It's under the title of, SGP thirty two as a as part of a portfolio of managed connectivity. So I think what could you talk about the fact that, and you've already mentioned it that that that the way to do this is a you've used the phrase a managed transition. You've used a as part of a managed serve certain, a managed service. So what is your recommendation from Transformer of the way customers should go about both evaluating and and experimenting, with this exciting standard? The the thinking was that really when the when the standard came out, the expectation was that maybe it allows enterprises full freedom to switch between their carriers of choice and and away they go. And that always raised a few red flags with me, with the question being, can I, if I were to put myself in the in the boots of an enterprise, can can I do this myself? Would I want to operate the infrastructure, the SMDP plus, the EIEM, to throw in a couple more tasty acronyms, into the discussion? Can I do what I've discussed earlier or or what we discussed earlier? All the negotiation of of connectivity contracts. Am I going to handle all of the, the back office integration, the API and settings, all of that all that sort of stuff? Will I want to do that myself? And and I think the conclusion was, for the most part, and there were always some exceptions, for the most part, probably no, which means that what you need to do is find somebody to provide that to you as a managed service. And this is not any different from, really, connectivity as it's being provided up until now, typically, as a as a managed service. If you wanted to, as a as an IoT customer, you could set yourself up as your own MVNO, but precious few have chosen to do that in any in any way, because it's complicated and and and probably you don't have the contract, you know, the negotiating muscle that that that others would. And so, inevitably, I think we we hone in on this idea of it being a a managed service. Somebody interjecting themselves between the enterprise customer and the and and the networks, and that might be network operator or it might be, but but, eventually, providing that, managed service to ensure all of those all all of those pieces for the for the customer are done for them because it's a specialist role. It's not really one that, enterprise customers have have shown much interest or capacity for doing in most cases up until up until now. So it's gonna be a a managed service. And that and that, topic of managed transition is really related to the fact that thirty two is not available yet, and so you'll be using something else before you're using thirty two. And so you'll you'll wanna manage that that that transition from one to to another. And that, again, points to working with, some sort of a managed service provider type, type company. With experience on Yeah. O o two. The and the one of the interesting things about when new standards come along is that you get a lot of innovation, and you get a lot of start ups. And, certainly, we've noticed and you do a very good analysis of the, of the overall landscape for IoT as part of Transformer. Me giving you a plug now. Thank you. Services that you offer. You've just released it. We're very pleased with our position, in you in your chart. But the but but there's a ton of new entrants. And and, certainly, we've seen an increase in the last, I would say, year, eighteen months since SGP thirty two was clearly gonna be coming out. There's been a lot of, startups, and I would call them pure SGP thirty two startups. So people who have just said, I'm gonna start from scratch and build an IoT MB and O, next generation MB and O. I'm not gonna deal with any of this legacy stuff. It's complicated. I'm just going to be I'm going to offer thirty two, thirty two only. And they're the types of companies where I was referring to earlier that we've seen some people, you know, go with that and then, well, almost exclusively, hit the brakes in when some of these below the waterline, iceberg issues came up. So so, yeah, on this point about managed transition, I I is your point, and I think it is, that that it it has it's an it's an a managed service provider, either MVNO or MNO, that has the capability of both SGPO two and future capability, and expertise around thirty two as a managed service where the things like the portal, the user experience, everything stays, you know, like the swan on top of the water. I use another aquatic analogy. The the the above the water stays the same, whereas below the water, it might be o two thirty two. But the key thing is you've got to, as a as a managed service provider, have the ability for both because of what we said about it not being available. And at the same time, you've got to present it not as two solutions, but as one solution to the user. I I think that's right, Nick. And and, well, certainly for now. Okay? And and you made the point right at the start of the of the of the podcast that, what we're interested in discussing is the sort of here and now, reality check for here here and now. Yeah. And the reality is it's not as a technology actually available. Today, you need some road map for evolution to it, and you need a portfolio of offerings. And actually more more broad broadly in the long term, we we may find or we're likely to find that there is a number of ways in which IoT an IoT solution might be deployed that where thirty two isn't the appropriate one. So why limit yourself to just one one technology? Quite how things are gonna play out in the commercial models that that that dominate are still, I think somewhat to be confirmed, but we we because of many of the the the reasons that I've I've I've stated up until now, to do with the negotiating power. The fact that there's a whole lot of other things to manage than just the ESIM profile and a and a and a bunch of other things around that. We don't expect it necessarily to to, radically upset the, the the the status quo in terms of, who you would go to, what kind of services they might be able to provide to you, how they would well, maybe slightly in terms of how they would would do that because, I think more profile localization rather than roaming. But, I think in in terms of what's visible to the to the customer, it it may not be that apparent that there's been that much of a of a change, because one of the obligations of the connectivity providers will be to abstract the complexity out of that. If you're localizing on somebody else's network, well, you still need the management and control that comes with, what would historically have been managing on your own core network, but all of that is is is is possible. And and so what we see is a lot of moves to sort of abstract that complexity and mean that, whoever the connectivity providers are able to to deliver effectively a a a seamless, set set of capabilities, but, using thirty two where it's appropriate to do so, and where, for instance, for compliance reasons where it might be might be necessary. You know, you started the, podcast as we draw it to a conclusion. You started the podcast, with an interesting, well, it's all been interesting, but a very interesting one at the beginning in particular where where you said, normally in technology, we we always try and say, look, forget the technology itself. Forget forget the standards. Let's concentrate on the on the business use case. Let's concentrate on the value. What does it do for customers? You know, we we should hide this complexity. What why do customers even need to care about these obscure acronyms? We've got enough acronyms. And then, of course and and we said, well, unfortunately, right now, we do need to explain it because everyone's really, really interested. There's a huge amount of interest. We get asked about it all the time, hence the white paper. And I talked about, you know, three three x the LinkedIn views if you just talk about it as a subject. I'm sure that's the case for everybody. But but really, at the end of the day, success is when it fades back into the background. From our point of view, what we know we the customers shouldn't have to almost know or care about this. The fact is that providing you have full agnostic choice and and, as near as possible, a hundred percent connectivity, and as you as you say, connectivity is only a component of device to cloud, because that's what you really want is device to cloud. Mhmm. Why do you actually really need to care? So in an ideal world, we would say, well, we'll decide whether we use, o two, twenty two, thirty two, whatever comes out in the future. That's the that's the swan's legs below the water. Don't Yeah. Don't worry about it. But it it has been one of those things that comes along every now and again when suddenly everybody gets very excited about the technology, and you go to and and an acronym, and you you go to events. And there are there are huge conference streams and Mhmm. Talks and and things and, startups who are saying this is this is the new way. I I think, personally, that's probably a reflection of the frustration of IoT. Mhmm. You know, we've talked in many podcasts, about, you know, predictions. You and I have talked about it in previous podcasts that, you know, we thought there was gonna be fifty billion by twenty twenty. Turns out there was eleven billion. There's a lot of frustration, and it's all it's all too complex. It's too proprietary. If only there was something that could take away, this complexity. And I think a lot of people thought, oh, this is it. It's coming. It's from it's from GSMA, so it's going to be great. And as you said, it will definitely make things better. It is making things better already. We're doing SGP thirty two implementations, pre standard implementations right now. They will they will get better. And this this the complexity will go away, but it's not a switch, that that you can, just press. And suddenly, everything all the everything becomes interoperable and, easy to use. Not not a magic wand is how I've described it. Yes. It's not it's not a magic it's not a magic wand. And and, again, that's the reason for the white paper and the podcast. We're we're just saying be aware, experiment by all means, choose a provider. Obviously, we'd we like that to be us. But even if if not, just choose a provider who understands these issues and can hold your hand and make sure you don't run too far down a road that might be might be a a a blind alley. And, you know, this and keep keep tuned in because the as the standard gets ratified and a lot of these issues that people perhaps hadn't thought of, they will get resolved. My favorite one is that one that you quoted, which, talk about an unexpected consequence. Mhmm. There's no requirement, in the standard for thirty two, unlike twenty two consumer. There's no requirement for the current operator to be notified that you've left. So if I switch my mobile phone from, Vodafone to, I don't know, o two, I have to go to the shop. It's a bit of a pain in the butt, actually, to do. It takes twenty four hours. I have to get this ACK code, and I have to wait till it's been initiated. And then suddenly, I'm on o two, not Vodafone or whatever. But the fact is I do know my contract has terminated with Vodafone. I'm not gonna be paying the from the moment that PAC code has been, has has has been in initialized. But if you have ten thousand devices and there's no or or a hundred thousand devices or even a thousand devices, and your managed service provider doesn't think that's part of their value added services to do all the notifications and sort out the APNs and the and the whatever, you can imagine an awful lot of billing disputes where people say, why am I still getting billed? And people say, well, because you haven't I can't I can't tell you're not there anymore. I just know I've got a contract. Yeah. So, a lot of wrinkles which could cause a lot of, a lot of issues. And so, as always, be careful of of it and deal with people with experience, and, and and look for a managed transition from a managed services provider. I think that's the that that's the, make sure that you've got risk mitigation built into your plans is it would be my summary. I I I think so, but we should I mean, it is worth also stressing this is a great technology. It's it's a it's an incredibly useful tool, should we say, in the right hands? That one In the right hands. I'll go for it in inexperienced hands. Absolutely. Great technology. We're we're embracing it. We've built in the back end capabilities to to to offer it, and we're working on projects today. But yeah. It it experienced experience hands great potential. And anything that takes away the proprietary nature, stovepipe nature of IoT, which has been a subject of probably every one of the forty seven, I think it is, podcasts that we've done here so far can only be a good thing. So this is a big leap forward, for the industry as a whole. And, all available, Matt, in your, white paper that's on our website. I'm sure there are several several items that we didn't even get to, that are all mapped out in the in in the report. So, yes, thoroughly recommend taking a look at that. Yeah. So, Matt, let's leave it there. Thanks very much. Again, this has been a special episode, just because of the demand. People have been asking for this. So, hopefully, we've we've done it we've done it justice. You know where to get more, information. I'm I'm pretty sure we'll come back to this subject, in the future given, what's happening. But in the meantime, thanks very much. And, I'll as I say, I'll get plugged back to you. You there's a whole plethora of, white papers and capabilities, on transformers, website. You are a global analyst. We should point that out. I mean, we're both Brits, but but I know that in my dealings with, US operators, they all subscribe to you and follow you. So you are a global analyst in this space. Mhmm. So, your your insight and experience is very much appreciated, and I'm sure that's the case for people listening to this, podcast. So thanks again, and let's see whether or not we need to do a repeat on this one a bit later on to see how things have, matured and improved. Six months down the line, and we'll see how it's going. Actually, no. Maybe twelve months. I was gonna say six months. Twenty twenty five, and then we'll Yeah. Then we'll see how we Talking telecom. Six months is, is probably too optimistic. So thanks, Matt, and thanks to all of you for listening to this episode of the, IoT Leaders podcast. Thanks.