Telefonica goes international with M2M

In an effort to capture a share of the M2M market, Telefonica has established an international business unit to provide support to its business customers wanting to implement M2M services.

The company said that the new unit will have 100 staff backed by its existing Global M2M service, which it claims is the first integrated solution in the market to provide a turnkey solution and is supported by communication technology such as cellular, ADSL, Zigbee, UWB, satellite, RFID and NFC. A dedicated innovation unit will also develop new applications and devices for the M2M field.

It would appear that Telefonica, which says it has 10 years of experience in M2M technology and services, has not teamed with a major technology or infrastructure provider to make its push into the M2M sector. Vodafone announced last week that it had struck a partnership deal with Alca-Lu to implement M2M solutions in Germany.

A recent study conducted by the analyst firm Berg Research claimed that nearly 1.5 per cent of the mobile network connections worldwide were used for wireless M2M communication at the end of 2009, and that this figure would increase to just over 3 per cent by 2014 when the total number of wireless M2M connections are estimated to be 187.1 million.

However, while operators are plunging into this sector, some observers are worried that the cost of embedding cellular technology into M2M will make it too costly for many of the applications, such as smart utility metering, that will demand a low-cost solution to make business sense.

For more on this story:
The Financial

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