Eleven Asia Pacific mobile operators under Bridge Alliance formed the region's largest Machine-to-Machine (M2M) alliance.
The Alliance will offer a 'one-stop-shop' experience for M2M deployment across the Asia Pacific region and effectively becoming a center of excellence for M2M services and solutions to attract partnerships and provide customers with an end-to-end M2M regional capability.
M2M technology functions by connecting communication hardware to a physical asset: anything from a delivery truck, service vehicle, motorcycle, boat, production machine, an ATM terminal, freezer, elevator, data center, vault and so on.
Information about its present status and performance can be transmitted to a computer system and used to automate a business process or a consumer action.
Data is extracted straight from a machine with limited or no human intervention. These elements benefit industries through faster operations, more accurate data gathering and improved efficiency in terms of manpower, time and costs.
Aside from Globe Telecom (Philippines), the Bridge M2M Alliance comprises of Airtel (India), AIS (Thailand), CSL (Hong Kong), Maxis (Malaysia), MobiFone (Vietnam), Optus (Australia), SingTel (Singapore), SK Telecom (South Korea), Taiwan Mobile (Taiwan) and Telkomsel (Indonesia).
Together, the group serves a combined base of over 570 million subscribers, making it the largest M2M alliance in the Asia Pacific region.
Bridge M2M Alliance eliminates the complexity of dealing with multiple operators by offering seamless delivery of regional M2M services across geographical borders. The Alliance will also improve customers' service experience through enhanced interoperability, service levels and customer support.
Alessandro Adriani, CEO of Bridge Alliance, noted that: "Asia is made up of highly varied economies, uneven technological development and diversified regulatory requirements. As a result, multinational businesses find it extremely difficult to navigate the intricacies of the region and to fully capitalise on economies of scale.
"The evolution of Bridge Alliance in the M2M business is an indication of the commitment from the 11 operators to overcome these challenges for the success of customers' businesses."
The M2M partnership covers commercial as well as technological cooperation across various industries such as vehicle telemetry, security and energy management, among others.
The Alliance aims to build an ecosystem by partnering technology players in the M2M value chain such as application developers, module manufacturers and service providers.
[Image: Bridge Alliance]