Telefónica and Jasper partner on M2M

Spanish carrier Telefónica has struck a deal with machine to machine specialist Jasper Wireless that will see the two firms partner on enterprise and consumer M2M solutions. The Telefónica Control Centre, the carrier said, will enable “M2M enterprise customers and device manufacturers to profitably connect and manage embedded mobile devices.”

The connected device sector is billed as having enormous potential, with operators and vendors alike suggesting the addressable market is almost limitless. Swedish vendor Ericsson has suggested that there could be 50 billion connected devices by 2020, while Telefónica’s global M2M director, Carlos Morales described the sector as “the future of consumer and industrial electronics” in the firm’s announcement today.

But Jamie Moss, a senior analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media, said it was important to remember that there are many technologies over which devices can be connected, Bluetooth, RFID and wifi, for example, and that cellular solutions will be just one element of the overall market.

Moss said that, unlike other areas of their business, where operators seek to establish dominance in the value chain, in M2M there is an understanding that different players have different and important roles to play. “The carriers are not positioning themselves as end-to-end service providers, nor are they trying to control the M2M value chain,” Moss said. “They realise that the portion of overall M2M service revenues that connectivity alone is likely to account for will be small, but they are comfortable with this. This is because their role allows them to concentrate on leveraging their traditional core competency of managing access network infrastructure rather than attempting to become software solution providers.”

This year Jasper has signed similar deals with Russian carrier Vimpelcom and Australian market leader Telstra.