M2M alliance benefits from “pre-acquired customers”

The seven mobile operators across the world using the same M2M platform will automatically benefit from a degree of interoperability that makes it easier for enterprise customers to expand into new markets.

According to Jamie Moss, senior analyst in the mobile content and applications division of Informa Telecoms & Media, one the concepts that Jasper Wireless has been pushing is the ability to access “pre-acquired customers”.

KPN, NTT Docomo, Rogers, SingTel, Telefónica, Telstra and Vimpelcom are big names with a vast geographic reach between them, but the most important component of the alliance is M2M platform provider Jasper.

“This means that if you’ve got an enterprise customer in one part of the world using a carrier that uses the Jasper platform, then should that company wish to deploy that other region in the world, all it needs to do is find another carrier using the same platform. Then it will instantly be able to manage its devices across both markets,” he explained. “It would mean that carriers in the other markets have customers coming to them, simply because they use the Jasper platform.”

Russia’s Vimpelcom, one of the operators that is part of the alliance, admitted that this was a draw for it to join the alliance.

“The main thing is to develop a single solution to meet the requirements of multinationals,” a spokesperson told Telecoms.com. “Different standards and platforms actually inhibit the growth of products and services, as we’ve seen in the telecoms industry in the past.”

The alliance is the latest M2M collaboration to be established, but two other initiatives have already been set up which will compete for the same business.

Vodafone has its global service delivery platform; a custom built M2M solution developed in-house for rollout across all of the markets Vodafone operates in, and it has partnered with Verizon Wireless in the US to provide services predominantly across Western Europe and the US.

There is also the M2M Alliance, originally set up by Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom, with TeliaSonera and Everything Everywhere recently having joined that.

“To have this Jasper-based carrier alliance, it’s really a third group to address,” said Moss. “This new alliance arguably goes further because it includes carriers from completely different regions of the world – regions such as Singapore, Japan and Australia.”

However, there appears to be an absence of a US operator joining the alliance, which Jasper Wireless admits that it still needs to address. Despite that, Macario Namie, VP of Marketing at Jasper Wireless, argues that a key benefit of this new alliance is what it brings to end users.

The Jasper system consists of two components – one for the carrier, one for the enterprise customer. It allows individual enterprises to be able to use web-based APIs so they can monitor their network of connected devices internationally. They can see what devices are being used on O2 in the UK, on KPN in the Netherlands as well as on Telstra in Australia, seamlessly.

“With these other alliances, what does the customer actually get? Do they get common technologies, common support methods, ways that they can standardise their business across this breadth of operators? We certainly haven’t seen manifestations of that in the M2M Alliance with France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom,” said Namie.