The initiative, being promoted by the GSMA expects to reach 2,000 partners by 2020
A total of 14 mobile operator across the Asia Pacific region have joined the GSMA IoT partnership program.
Operators joining the partnership include Celcom, Dialog, DTAC, M1, Maxis, Ncell, Optus, Robi, Smart, Smartfren, Singtel, True, XL and Xpand.
The GSMA said that the APAC IoT Program represents the largest internet of things community in the region, with over 500 partners including mobile operators, consultants, developers, manufacturers, system integrators and vertical solution providers. The industry body also said that the alliance is expected to reach 2,000 partners by 2020.
APAC is currently the largest IoT market and is expected to reach 11 billion IoT connections by 2015, with an estimated revenue opportunity of $386 billion, according to GSMA Intelligence.
“The IoT is growing rapidly across the Asia Pacific region, with mobile operators working with their partners and the wider ecosystem to drive this expansion,” said Julian Gorman, head of Asia Pacific for the GSMA. “This program will support the development of the IoT by creating a cross-regional IoT community to facilitate collaboration and knowledge sharing, as well as creating opportunities that benefit both the supply chain and their customers. The program is already expanding to include other Asia Pacific countries and we welcome new members to join.”
A key focus of the program is the support of IoT abs, which are being set up by operators across the region to encourage the development of new IoT products and services. All operators in the program have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to ensure that the coordination and output among the IoT Labs is consistent with IoT standards regionally and globally, the GSMA said.
The IoT labs will be available to partners and customers in markets initially including Australia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Thailand.
“Indosat Ooredoo Business is driving transformation for enterprise as the preferred digital partner for business and are actively involved in Making Indonesia 4.0, as well as Smart Cities enabled by IoT,” said Haroon Shahul Hameed, director and COO at Indosat Ooredoo.
“We collaborate with enterprises, governments, universities, app developers and manufacturers to develop solutions on our best-in-class IoT platform. We provide fit to use and secure connectivity for IoT which include NB-IoT, where the use cases and solution being developed in our IoT Innovation Lab,” Hameed said.
“M1 has been working with leading technology and digital solutions partners, government agencies and customers to capture opportunities in the digital economy and support Singapore’s Smart Nation initiatives. Today, we are supporting our customers and partners for their IoT application development leveraging on our nationwide commercial NB-IoT network,” said Alex Tan, CIO at M1.
“In addition, our IoT lab provides a real-time environment for their experimentation. We look forward to engage more partners and drive new initiatives in the IoT ecosystem across Asia Pacific through the IoT partnership program with the GSMA,” Tan added.
