Vodafone launches global mobile machine-to-machine comms offering

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 22 July 2009 07:36

IT Industry - Strategy

Vodafone is launching a global machine to machine (M2M) service platform to help companies deploy and manage large, wireless M2M projects.

The new platform will be supported by an expert team with world-wide responsibility for growing Vodafone’s M2M business. Vodafone says it will provide a single point of contact for customers to manage the complex area of M2M connectivity from early concept development to support for national and multinational deployments.

"Companies will be able to centrally manage and control the process of rolling out M2M devices across many countries, increasing the speed of implementation and reducing the cost, complexity and risk traditionally associated with deploying such projects."

As well as enabling companies to gather useful customer data from a wide range of wireless intelligent devices, the platform will offer a suite of management functionality including the ability to centrally activate, suspend and deactivate devices at the click of a button, Vodafone says.

The move comes just a month after global networking company, Orange Business Services (France Telecom) opened an International M2M centre based in Brussels within its Mobistar cellular network operator and devoted to machine-to-machine (M2M) connectivity solutions for international companies. It said the move signalled its intention "to be amongst the world leaders in the M2M field."