Twelve of our depots have a diesel tank for the lorries. Each tank has a gauge that reports its level to the fuel supplier, who refills it before it runs low, so nobody at the depot has to dip the tank or order fuel. It is one of those arrangements that works so well it has never once come up in a meeting.
This summer, while we were reviewing our mobile contracts, we asked each supplier of a connected device on our sites how it talked to the outside world. The tank gauges send their readings over 2G. So do the electricity meters at five depots, the remote gate barriers at three and a set of temperature sensors in our timber drying store. None of these were bought by IT, and none appear on any list of ours.
The UK mobile networks have agreed with the government that 2G and 3G will be switched off by 2033 at the latest. 3G has already gone. 2G has lasted longer because so much equipment like ours still depends on it, but it will go too, and some networks may switch it off before the deadline. When it does, a gauge on a tank will keep measuring and stop telling anyone. The first sign will be a lorry that cannot fill up at six in the morning.
Seven years sounds like plenty of time. It is less than it sounds, because these devices last a long time and are replaced by somebody else's contract. The fuel supplier's gauges are on a ten year agreement signed in 2022. Two of the device suppliers told us the models they are fitting today still use 2G, because it is cheap and works almost everywhere. Every device bought on those terms this year will outlive the network it depends on.
So the network has become part of the specification. Any connected device that facilities, transport or a supplier puts on our sites now goes on one register, with the network it uses and the date that network is expected to end. New contracts have to say what happens when the network goes, and we prefer devices that use LTE-M or NB-IoT, the low power successors built for this kind of equipment. For the existing ones we have agreed replacement dates with each supplier, the tank gauges first.
More of the quiet equipment on our sites will depend on a network someone else decides to close. Ask what it talks over and until when, before you sign for ten years.
– Serguey Shinder
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