Internet of Sound and the

missed opportunity by BLE

Trillbit
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Jul 18, 2018 · 3 min read

When Apple launched iBeacons in 2013, people expected it to

disrupt the way people experienced and interacted in physical
spaces , in the same way that Apple disrupted the music industry
through the iPod and the phone industry through the iPhone.
Washington Post wrote that ibeacon is going to fundamentally
change our lives.
However, even after 5 years and the efforts of giants like Google
with Eddystone protocol and billions of dollars from Silicon
Valley, beacons have failed miserably. .

So, why have the Bluetooth Beacons not lived up to their

expectations ? And more importantly, what is the alternative? In
the hype and excitement about the possibilities of BLE ( Bluetooth
Low Energy) beacons, experts missed the salient cost, operational
and behavioral considerations which have hampered user
adoption..

Deployment cost : A single BLE beacon is cheap , but deploying

over a large area such means that the cost multiply rapidly and it
might cost from 40,000 USD for a small mall of size upto 200,000
square foot, to 400,000 USD for a mall of size of about 1 million
square foot. This is a significant cost that creates a big barrier to
entry, especially when businesses are investing it upfront.

Compatibility: Google has Eddystone, Apple has iBeacons and

there are others in between. This lack of seamless integration
increases costs as well as the complexity of BLE deployment.

BLE Beacon Management and scalability: Deploying a few

beacons is easy, deploying in large number makes their
management exponentially difficult. Correct placement of
Beacons, their inventory management, regular battery change and
general upkeep requires management infrastructure and costs
making scalability difficult.

The Bluetooth behavior of users: Beacons only works if users

have their Bluetooth turned on , but most users switch it off when
not in use due to high battery consumption by Bluetooth. Battery
consumption has been one of the major roadblocks affecting BLE
adoption.
Isolated experience: Beacon’s experience and interaction are
confined to a single channel of physical location. It’s limited in
both the interaction and scope of the brand story and message.
Delivering coupons in the store without knowing anything else
about the customer adds little value to the business. .

The Internet of Sound ( audio/ultrasonic beacons ) is an

interesting new option that solves these scalability and adoption
bottlenecks. Audio beacons encode data in the inaudible frequency
range (near-ultrasound) of sound which can be decoded by any
phone . loudspeaker or smart device with a microphone. This
essentially transforms every loud speaker into a data transmitter
and every microphone into a data receiver.

The biggest advantage of this technology is scalability. There are

already more loudspeakers on earth than people , and leveraging
that pre-existing infrastructure to deliver proximity intelligence
could succeed where beacons have failed.

Scalability: One huge advantage of audio beacons is that they do

not need additional hardware. This makes them extremely easy to
deploy, manage and scale. There is no cost or time associated with
deployment.

Management: Nearly every public location has loudspeakers

installed , and audio beacons could be managed via cloud or onsite
, in the same way people manage music in their venue.

Compatibility: Audio beacons software is cross-platform , and

works with Android, iOS as well as Windows .

Battery consumption: Microphones need very little power. The

associated software stacks to run the audio beacons need some
power, but it is 300% less battery intensive than Bluetooth. This
solves one of the biggest user issues of Bluetooth beacons.

Integration: Audio beacons or data over audio is not just limited

to speaker systems of physical locations , but can also be used in
TV, Radio , and even social media platforms such as Youtube and
Facebook. It can be part of the brand story and not an isolated
experience. Retail proximity experience can succeed only if it
incorporates the company’s knowledge of its existing customers ,
and ties it in with the existing brand story from multiple channels.
Audio is the only option where this is possible.

McKinsey predicts that by 2025, IoT will have an 11 Trillion dollar

worth of impact on the global economy and audio beacons will
help this to come true. There are a few companies advancing the
field of Internet of sound and Trillbit is one of the leaders in using
sound for proximity intelligence.