Ireland
Ireland supports the development and growth of the necessary infrastructure and services that enable the IoT functionalities. The efforts are mainly made by the national and government initiatives that are described below, but there are a lot more research institutes and companies based in Ireland that either develop IoT oriented products and services, or do research on the evolution of IoT.
IDA Ireland [19], is a non-commercial, semi-state body promoting Foreign Direct Investment into Ireland through a wide range of services. IDA reports that Ireland is “the natural choice” of companies that develop IoT products and services. Ireland has the infrastructure and the knowledge base to support the collection, the connection and the transformation of data that is needed in an IoT ecosystem. It has a successful industrial heritage in semiconductors and microelectronics. Intel’s IoT chip, the Quark chip, was designed in Ireland, proving that the country has the expertise needed for the production of a globally recognised IoT chip and platform. Furthermore, it has the seventh fastest broadband speed in the world, making the country a perfect location for data centres. It also provides the option to test and trial access to the radio spectrum, while Vodafone’s M2M technology in Ireland is powering connected solutions in everything from airlines to power feed. Last but not least, Ireland has some of the most-established data analytics centres, such as those by Accenture and SAP but also Insight Centre for Data Analytics, the biggest publicly funded data analytics research centre in Europe.
Pervasive Nation [18] is Ireland’s IoT testbed. It is operated by CONNECT, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Future Networks headquartered at Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin. The initiative’s main objective is to provide a large-scale testbed to scientific groups from the research and the industry domain for experimentation and innovation. The testbed uses Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) technology, software defined radios (SDR) and Application Enablement Platform (AEP) technologies. This testbed is particularly suitable for connecting small devices installed in not easily accessible areas, which depend on batteries and have restricted data rates.
Another active non-profit initiative in Ireland is the Open & Agile Smart Cities initiative (OASC)[20]. Its objective is to create a Smart City market and launch the use of a shared set of methods to develop systems and make them interoperable across a single city as well as between multiple cities. OASC provides the network for cities all over the world to share best practices, compare results, and avoid vendor (and city) lock-in while advocating for de facto standards.
