The M2M industry is rapidly expanding, with analyst firms estimating that we’ll have 50 billion connected devices by 2020. So how can service providers benefit from this proliferation in machine-enabled devices? Here are some of the interesting use cases I’ve seen for M2M services:
Using policy and device profiles and usage characteristics to create tailored service plans that can be based on connections, transactions, or the amount and frequency of data transmissions. An example would be allowingelectricity meters to securely connect to the network and send data only at certain times of day or when required.
Being able to offer a variety of service level agreements. For example, a tablet device needs to download new ebooks quickly but infrequently, and usually only from one website. In this case, there is an established model for purchases, where connectivity becomes an add-on or revenue share. The bandwidth needed to read the book is low. On the other hand a traffic surveillance camera with automatic backup to online storage will send large amounts of data.
M2M services can also monitor the traffic and usage patterns for a smart car and leverage this intelligence to evolve the smart car service and marketing approach.
And finally there are some important security use cases, such as tracking a machine’s usage and if a threshold is exceeded, an alert or location look up can be sent to ensure the device is not stolen or broken.
The rapid uptake in smartphones and data-hungry applications such as mobile video and social networking has set the stage for the mobile data explosion. Operators are being forced to evolve their networks to higher bandwidth IP networks such as long term evolution (LTE) to handle the surge in mobile application bandwidth demands.
Attend this free Tekelec webinar on March 17 to learn more about the path to LTE and how operators can create an intelligent network core and create new revenue opportunities. Topics of discussion include:
Top 5 operators Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telecom Italia, Telefonica and Vodafone announced their decision at MWC11 in Barcelona to commercially launch Rich Communication Suite (RCS) across several European markets from late 2011. Other MNOs are expected to join this initiative. The launch will be based on a new adapted version of RCS Release 2.0, which is called RCS-e, and will be based on the use across networks of IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) technology, an architectural framework for delivering IP multimedia services. The idea is that mobile customers can use instant messaging (IM), live video sharing and file transfer simultaneously during calls across any device on any network operator in a simple and more intuitive way. This renewed focus is based on results from RCS trials to date and a better understanding of where operators can further enhance their offering to deliver more value to customers and complement established 3rd party services.
This is a pragmatic approach by MNOs to reduce time-to-market and stimulate roll-out of rich communication services in order to combat competitive pressures from over-the-top players. So far deployment of RCS faced two hurdles: unavailability of RCS-ready handsets and complexity of RCS interoperability between MNOs. The RCS-e initiative addresses both obstacles. RCS-e specification reduces terminal conformance requirements to core functionalities in order to ensure availability on low end devices and, therefore, boosts the market penetration curve. Strong endorsement of G5 MNOs pushes now the handset vendors to expedite introduction of RCS-ready phones or to open up their platforms to allow seamless integration of 3rd party RCS clients into the phone’s native address book. Even Apple cannot continue to be silent about RCS anymore. On the other hand, RCS-e specification focuses on easy interoperability by making “social profile information via presence“ an optional feature. The fundamental mechanism that enables RCS-e is service or capability discovery using SIP OPTIONS. This discovery mechanism is important in that it allows users to determine what services are available before calling and allows operators to roll-out new agreed services to their own schedule. RCS-e provides an adaptive framework for deployment of additional services such as presence, social networking and location base services (LBS).
Moreover, this initiative fosters development of RCS based apps and a growing RCS ecosystem. We expect to see more innovative apps using enriched services that RCS makes possible. Think about for example how social networks, premium content providers, advertising firms, gaming or e-commerce businesses can benefit from rich services such as IM, video sharing and file transfer interoperable between all devices and networks.
Tekelec welcomes RCS-e and looks forward to working with operators on this initiative.
Billions of connections? Demand for high data volume? Unpredictable traffic?
Tekelec understands the needs and challenges associated with M2M and can help you optimize your network with its synergies between Subscriber Data Management, Messaging Services, Policy Charging Rules Function and Monitoring and Supervision. Check out our new video for more information.
By Arjan Lasschuit, Director of Product Marketing
Next to increasing bandwidth of mobile internet connections using LTE, operators should not miss out on the opportunity to jumpstart their text messaging traffic for their LTE and IMS subscribers.
As we all know, text messaging will continue to play an important role in the way subscribers will want to communicate. LTE/4G subscribers will assume that they can interchange text messages with 3G and 2G subscribers, despite the technology differences. Also many services and 4G applications will continue to depend on text messaging as an enabler to trigger communication.
Opening up the messaging exchange capability of the LTE subscribers to the large 2G/3G subscriber base will help increase the operator’s text messaging volumes of LTE subscribers. In order to do this, an IP-Short Message (IP-SM) Gateway is a critical and mandatory building block needed for LTE network deployments. It will soon become clearer that this messaging bridge will be the cornerstone of next-gen messaging because of its seamless interoperability with 2G/3G text messaging. This can also be one of the cards up the sleeve of operators to continue to defend the ownership of the messaging domain against the over the top players.
Tekelec’s IP-SM Gateway, which combines Tekelec’s SIP, SS7 and messaging expertise can be deployed and integrated in several configurations and is able to scale up to a complete Next Generation Messaging solution that works with Tekelec’s Next Generation Subscriber Data Management solution.
The benefits include:
Increased messaging volume by bridging the 4G network domain with the 3G/2G network domain;
Protection of investment by re-using the 2G messaging infrastructure;
Grow as you earn deployment due to modular deployment and virtually unlimited scalability.
For more information, please see this product brief.
Arjan is director of product marketing at Tekelec for mobile messaging. He is based in Amsterdam.
