The Caspian Innovation Conference was held in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, hosted by the Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technologies of Azerbaijan.
Organized under the theme "Internet of Things: The Touchstone of Modern Society" within the BakuTel 2019 event, the Caspian Innovation Conference brought together government representatives, high-level officials from regulatory authorities and international organizations, industry leaders, and sector representatives.
Ömer Abdullah Karagözoğlu, President of the Information Technologies and Communication Authority, also attended the conference. Karagözoğlu delivered a speech in the session titled “Internet of Things Development Models” at the Caspian Innovation Conference, a regional platform where topics such as broadband, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things (IoT), e-services, ICT-based initiatives, Industry 4.0, and cybersecurity are addressed alongside sectoral challenges.
President Karagözoğlu began his speech by stating that internet technology has undergone significant changes since its early stages and has become a crucial communication infrastructure aiming for ubiquitous connectivity. Karagözoğlu emphasized that this has led to the fourth phase of the internet, the Internet of Things (IoT) technology, achieving the ability to control and analyze data, and highlighted that IoT technology is rapidly advancing with technological progress. At the same time, noting that the number of connected devices is expected to exceed 25 billion by 2020 according to most sources, Karagözoğlu shared the information that approximately 4.1 billion cellular IoT connections are projected by 2024 with an annual growth rate of 30 percent. Expressing that this accelerated growth brings many opportunities as well as problems, Karagözoğlu pointed out that the primary challenge is the difficulty in establishing a universal model for IoT applications.
Emphasizing that they consider international standardization activities regarding IoT security to be very important as BTK, Karagözoğlu stated that they closely follow the developments in IoT security activities of international and regional standardization organizations in this context. President Karagözoğlu noted that today's oil can be described as data and that Turkey's data must remain in Turkey. Pointing out the necessity of a secure internet ecosystem to ensure this, Karagözoğlu mentioned the studies conducted by USOM on this matter.
In the continuation of his speech, Karagözoğlu mentioned that mobile networks are frequently used in IoT. Drawing attention to potential data security and dependency issues arising because manufacturers and mobile operators integrate SIM cards into IoT devices in their own countries before bringing products to market, Karagözoğlu reminded that the E-call service used in next-generation motor vehicles is one of the important examples of this issue and added: “In this context, we are working in collaboration with mobile operators, vehicle manufacturers, and other state institutions to ensure the data security of our citizens.”
President Karagözoğlu also touched upon IoT being one of the main areas of activity for 5G. Karagözoğlu emphasized that 5G technology plays an important role in triggering innovation in vertical sectors and strengthening socio-economic transformations with increased efficiency, sustainability, and overall welfare by utilizing the communication sector and technology infrastructure. President Karagözoğlu stated that 5G networks will provide producers with tremendous benefits in terms of data speed, reliability, efficiency, capacity, and security, that objects will communicate with less latency thanks to 5G, and added that 5G is considered important in terms of the Internet of Things, and studies continue in this direction.