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Our world is increasingly connected. Mobile data traffic continues to rise and new devices are constantly emerging into our everyday lives. According to analyst Mary Meeker, 13% of all mobile traffic is now executed from a mobile device, up from only 4% two years ago.
The opportunities for connected devices has also resulted in a mushrooming machine-to-machine communications market, offering new insights and operational efficiencies for a range of businesses including automotive, healthcare, energy, logistics and transportation.
As the hub enabling connectivity, operators have potential enabling a common platform for M2M, easing what is today a fragmented and disconnected approach.
Bottom line: the exploding M2M market opens up new business opportunities for mobile operators. Typical M2M initiatives are independent, resulting in industry specific systems that are expensive to build and maintain. By providing a common M2M platform, operators can substantially reduce development and support costs and introduce new value added services.
In creating this platform, operators should keep the following four “pillars of success” for M2M networks in mind.
Access data
It’s hard to exaggerate the complexity involved in many M2M systems. Many of the systems incorporate legacy technology along with cellular devices.
Consider e-health. In addition to such mobile devices as heart and fitness monitors, systems include insurance databases, administrative systems and diagnostic systems. Each of these are independent systems and are often part of an independent vertical initiative such as HIV/AIDs, immunization projects, prenatal care projects, malaria eradication projects, etc.
Operators are uniquely positioned as the hub of connectivity, making possible a common infrastructure gateway that can interact with many disparate systems.
Normalize data
Collecting data is only the first challenge. Raw data in itself isn’t useful, it must first be normalized and correlated so that it can be analyzed and made useful. Operators have long experience correlating and normalizing network data (for billing purposes, for example) and are uniquely positioned to provide this service for the even more complex M2M systems.
Enable actionable data
Network policies can be thought of as a complex series of if/then logical gates. For example, if a person in a “gold tier” starts a data session, then ensure high quality of service.
This capability can be leveraged within M2M networks to drive new and innovative service offerings. For example, if a heart monitor registers an anomaly, then send a notification to emergency services.
Particular data might have unique value within a system as well. For example, the packet that contains the notification of a heart attack can be treated with higher priority than a packet containing a social network update.
Monetizing/charging
Enabling a common gateway, providing for normalized data and enabling actionable logic based on data exchange are all valuable services. To ensure operators are able to capture this value, M2M systems require an auditable real time charging system that can support many millions – even billions – of devices with many different stakeholders and associated rates and service-level agreements.
Operators have an infrastructure in place to provide all these services for subscriber services provided to individuals. By leveraging these services, operators can take advantage of their central role in enabling the connected world. Understanding how to create, control and monetize M2M networks are crucial to the expected $373 billion addressable market for operators by 2020 (Machina Research).
