IEEE ComSoc Internet of Things (IoT) Summit, Argentina, October 2017

By Gerardo Demarco - Faculty of Engineering, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina and Ricardo A. Veiga - Faculty of Engineering, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina
Joel Rodrigues (National Institute of Telecommunications, Inatel, Brazil).

The Faculty of Engineering, Universidad de Buenos Aires, in collaboration with the IEEE ComSoc Argentina Chapter, organized the IEEE ComSoc Internet of Things (IoT) Summit on 25–26 October 2017.

It hosted industry practitioners, consultants, national and international policymakers from ITU, entrepreneurs and researchers. More than 200 people assisted to learn and discuss the latest IoT technologies, applications and services. They were analyzed from various points of view (academia, industry and government), including some conferences aimed at vertical industries like e-health, smart cities and agriculture, for example. Several other panels and keynote speakers were organized, some of them in parallel, where government, regulators, ITU, and more than 20 distinguished speakers participated in interactive exchanges with the audience.

The event started with a welcome speech by Dr. Oscar M. Gonzalez, the State Undersecretary for Regulations Affaires, followed by Dr. Eduardo Levy Yeyati, Director of the Argentina 2030 program.

The event continued with a series of talks, including two specific from ComSoc: “Challenges towards Preparing for the New Generation Technologies for Internet of Things” by Dr. Joel Rodrigues (Portugal/Brazil), and “Networking for Big Data” by Dr. Nelson Fonseca (Brazil) as a part of his Distinguished Lecture Tour through South America.

Ricardo Veiga, Nelson Fonseca, Juan Codagnone, Cherlene Rodrigues (Joel’s wife), Joel Rodrigues.

Other specific panels were “Infrastructure and Connectivity: IoT vs. Spectrum Challenges” and “Cloud Platforms for IoT.” These panels presented some of the latest hot topics about IoT technologies, applications and services. During the second day, Dr. Joel Rodrigues talked about “IoT Research and Challenges for Health applications,” including some references to the stateof- the-art devices available nowadays.

In parallel, two other panels were presented: “Communications Systems for IoT” and “Regulations Like Innovation Accelerators.” These two last panels were focused on the role of regulations from the industry and government points of view. Héctor Huici, State Secretary for Information and Communications Technologies, made a few closing remarks on Thursday 26 October.

During the breaks and lunch, many groups continued with Q&A to the speakers, showing that a growing interest in communications was settled after this Argentina–IEEE ComSoc Internet of Things (IoT) Summit.

Industry Leaders, Academics and Government Officers were very satisfied with these meetings, and ComSoc was set up again in their minds as a reference point in this area.

Left to right: Celedonio von Wuthenau (CICOMRA), Ricardo Veiga (UBA-IEEE ComSoc), Héctor Huici (SeTIC), Gerardo Demarco (UBA-IEEE ComSoc), Oscar González (SeTIC), Paula Córdoba (INTEL), Alejandro Adamowicz (GSMA), Jorge Cella (Microsoft), Ricardo Pérez (SeTIC).