With M2M increasingly being recognised as an important growth area, Vodafone UK claims it has captured around 40 per cent of the market since it launched a division focused on this sector last year.
The company, which believes this success is partly due to its robust cellular network, recently won a deal with British Gas to install Vodafone SIM cards in smart meters for reading gas and electricity in homes, and now is said to be working with the automotive industry to integrate SIM cards in cars for GPRS signal and mobile voice.
Vodafone enterprise director, Peter Kelly, said the company has installed around one million M2M devices in the U.K. The patent-pending platform is able to support businesses with an international footprint to roll out M2M devices in other countries.
"Vodafone SIM cards are also being embedded in smart meters for gas and electricity in Holland and New Zealand. But, the U.K. is a bigger market and the Centrica (British Gas) partnership is the biggest M2M contract Vodafone has secured," Kelly said.
Separately, Phoenix Contact has signed a deal with Vodafone Germany to use its network to provide a data tariff targeted for use with M2M industrial applications such as fault messaging, telecontrol, remote maintenance, performance monitoring and firmware updating.
Holger Bühl, sales manager for Vodafone's M2M business in Germany, said that M2M was one of Vodafone's most important growth areas. He added that the Phoenix tie-up "would help the company cover a much broader range in this segment."
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