Relationship with Three key to success of wearable SOS device

The combination of someone falling in a garden and Three’s flexible and easy-to-manage Internet of Things (IoT) solution has led to the development of a highly innovative new SOS device worn on the wrist like a watch that acts as a personal alarm, GPS tracker and voice-only mobile phone.

“Back in 2014, an elderly uncle of mine fell in his garden,” recalls WatchOvers founder and chief executive Eamonn O’Connor. “He had his personal SOS pendant around his neck, but it didn’t work at the end of the garden. Those devices are great, but they tend to only work well indoors. We started to look for other solutions that would work outdoors.”

He started to research potential solutions and travelled to China, where he attended a number of electronics trade shows. "I found a company that had built a mobile phone into a watch," says O'Connor. "The device wasn't suitable for Europe, though, so we got them to redesign it. We launched our first device in October 2015."

The newly-formed company then faced the challenge of educating the market. “A mobile phone in the shape of a watch was new to people. It wasn’t as if we were selling a new and improved version of something already established on the market.”

Slimmer device

Sales started to grow nevertheless but there were other challenges. “The watch was still quite big and we wanted it to be able to fit under a user’s sleeve, so we developed a second version which is just 13mm thick. It’s like an old digital watch.”

Sales have taken off, with parents of younger children also finding it very useful. “It has features people like,” O’Connor says. “It can’t go on the internet. You control the numbers it can call and the numbers it can receive calls from. It gives parents a bit more security. You can set a geofence on it so that if the child goes further from home than a certain allowed distance the phone will alert you. The geolocation features allow you to find the child straight away if they do go further. This is also a very useful feature for elderly people suffering from dementia.”

The company is now about to launch PetTrackie. “If you have a pet with a tendency to wander away from the home, you will always be able to find it. We are also looking at devices for briefcases and suitcases and other applications as well.”

The partnership with Three dates back almost to the very beginning. “The watch uses a SIM and when we went to other providers they wanted to know how many we were going to sell, what its monthly usage was going to be, and wanted contracts specifying exactly what it was going to do. But as a young start-up we couldn’t do that.

“When we sat down with Three, they recognised that we were a start-up and were very flexible. They helped us get up and running. They gave us the robust IoT system that we needed to manage all the SIMs at a competitive price and were very flexible in their approach. Three gives us great support. They are more like a technology partner than a supplier. They haven’t tried to tie us into anything and they understand our needs.

“When we went to Three with the pet product it wasn’t a question of specifying an amount of SIMs or coming up with sales projections. They just asked us how many SIMs we needed to get started. Three IoT solutions are very straightforward and easy to manage. We can go into the system and manage it very easily. We can turn off a SIM if it is taken out of a device or it exceeds allowable usage. Everything is fully controllable from our side.”

Karl McDermott, head of 3Connected Solutions, is proud of the company’s commitment to innovative start-ups. “We invested in this area a number of years ago,” he says. “We offer a scalable managed connectivity solution which gives customers a lot of control. It allows them put in restraints such as preventing SIMs being removed from devices and so on.

“Start-ups are looking for something different, not just internet access. They want flexibility and control. We understand that a lot of these companies need help to get started. You can’t go looking for a detailed business plan or whatever at the very early stage. We are willing to take a leap of faith and offer then the help and support they need. We are very proud of the quality of service offered by our support desk. We have a device team to help customers add devices to the network.”

The partnership with WatchOvers continues to deepen. “I am going to run some tests on a new IoT device for Three in Spain, " says O’Connor. “It’s a waterproof kids’ watch. Our devices use Three’s global network infrastructure, which means they connect automatically with any international mobile network and that allows them to be used almost anywhere. We are speaking to a large travel company who would be interested in rolling that product out across the whole of Spain if the trials work out.”