Top mobile operators — Globe Telecom Philippines, Airtel India, AIS Thailand, CSL Hong Kong, Maxis Malaysia, MobiFone Vietnam, Optus Australia, SingTel Singapore, SK Telecom South Korea, Taiwan Mobile Taiwan and Telkomsel Indonesia — formed a machine-to-machine (M2M) alliance.
Together, the group serves a combined base of over 570 million subscribers, making it the largest M2M alliance in the Asia Pacific region.
The initiative – called Bridge M2M Alliance — of 11 telecom operators under the Bridge Alliance in Asia Pacific is designed to eliminate the complexity of dealing with multiple operators by offering seamless delivery of regional M2M services across geographical borders. The Alliance will also improve customers’ service experience through enhanced interoperability, service levels and customer support.
According to a Global M2M Wireless Network Services market report, the interoperability at the hardware and software as well as the user interface level is posing a heavy challenge for the M2M market. This adverse effect of the coordination in the value chain acts as a hindrance to offering complete solutions to end-users.
M2M solutions require maintenance, software updates, data hosting, connectivity, and other services running simultaneously in order to provide a complete M2M solution to the end-user. Hence, the coordination among the members of the M2M value chain poses a major challenge for the M2M market.
Research and Markets said in its Global M2M Wireless Services Market Forecasts, 2016 that telecoms such as China Mobile, Telefonica, AT&T, Vodafone and Verizon dominate the M2M industry.
The Bridge M2M Alliance will offer one-stop-shop experience for M2M deployment in Asia Pacific region and effectively becoming a center of excellence for M2M services and solutions to attract partnerships and provide customers with an end-to-end M2M regional capability.
The M2M partnership covers commercial as well as technological cooperation across various industries such as vehicle telemetry, security and energy management, among others. This enables the development of new business models, creation of new products and services as well as reduction in customers’ operational costs.
Alliance members will cooperate to secure significant commercial benefits and economies of scale for customers and to enable joint product development initiatives.
