When Phase One is complete, and drones are secure, the new risk will be the security of the Internet of Things. Flaws have already been exposed, and it seems clear that using the regular Internet for accessing Things will not do.

Phase One can easily expand from drones to Things. There will be the burden of costs, because Things will mostly be small and cheap, and adding security measures would increase the manufacturing and operating costs.

As with drones being used for terrorist activities, it will only take a couple of high-profile Thing hacks for new laws to be implemented.

The system of Phase One will easily extend to Things. The only difference will be that Things are stationary. They will still need to be registered, and to transmit their credentials every 24 hours.

Having a permission-based switchboard will be important for Things. Especially if it is via a network that is not the regular Internet. The number of parties wishing to share data will be massive. As an example, a single thermometer device could have hundreds of parties tapping its data, from consumer weather services, to those of the government, to local Things that combine the temperature with their own data.

The most discussed will be video cameras, and who can see the footage they record. Owners of the Things could choose to give automatic rights to local police, private security companies, neighbouring households and businesses, or none of them.

A central switchboard could be trusted if a system similar to Bitcoin’s block chain was used.

At this stage a commercial purpose is required, because operating the system will be getting very expensive, perhaps straining the budgets of Apple/Google.

Fees

At present, registering a vehicle involves fees. It shouldn’t be any different for drones or even Things. Fees can be split between the system and the authorities. The beauty of this is that the system can offer free usage in exchange for exclusive use of certain data.

Owners of a temperature thing will have these options:

• Provide the data for free over the Internet
• Provide the data securely for free, paying a fee to the System
• Provide the data securely at a cost, paying a commission to the System
• Provide the data securely for free, paying no fees as long as the System has access to the data
• And so on

The System will be able to leverage the data they are passing through. The possibilities are endless.

Acceptance

Drones will require registration and monitoring because they have the potential to do harm. While the information from Things might be used by bad people, the actual Things aren’t capable of doing much harm – no more than personal computers or phones. They won’t require government registration.

There will be a duality in Thing data transmission similar to the Android and iPhone duality. The choices will be:

• use the regular Internet for free, and risk being hacked or monitored
• use the new System for a fee, and get security and functionality

The aim is to create the iOS of IoT data transmission. When Phase 3 kicks in, the desire to be part of the new System will be major. For example, having your data made available to those wearing Augmented Reality spectacles. Or accessing the app providers that pay to use your data.

Technical Aspects

The hardware for secure data transmission needs to be affordable. Most Things will already be battery-powered and accessing the Internet wirelessly. The hardware for accessing the System will need to be of a similar cost.

Otherwise, the same System used for the drones can be replicated for Things. They could be on the same System, but parallel systems seem safer. A possible solution is for drones to use two systems – one for regulatory purposes, and one for the Things onboard (cameras, sensors and the like).

Video streaming will become an issue. The hardware will become so cheap that the 5G bandwidth could become overwhelmed by billions of Things with cameras. Thankfully there are only a set number of eyeballs that can watch live streams, so the problem lies with archive footage. Do things store them locally, with the potential of being physically broken into, or do they use bandwidth sending the archives elsewhere? A bunch of possibilities come to mind:

• local storage is safely encrypted
• local storage is wiped every week, as many security cameras do today
• archive footage is sent over the regular Internet
• archive footage is sent during off-peak times on 5G
• live access has a cost attached, perhaps just a few cents per minute

Phase Two might not take off unless aspects of Phase Three are made available at launch, to make the System sexy.