Telefónica aims to help utilities meet the challenges of monitoring and supervision. The company has developed an integrated solution, called the Connected Metering Platform, that allows both communications and utility operators to enhance smart metering deployments. Telefónica announced the platform launch yesterday, saying that it integrates machine-to-machine (M2M) communications and metering infrastructure management.
With this platform, Telefónica is jumping into the integration of M2M managed connectivity with smart meters that promises to help utilities and network operators improve their monitoring and supervision capabilities, while reducing the operational costs of their network and metering infrastructure.
It is an effort by one of the world’s largest telecom groups to get a share of a market which is expected to reach 50 billion connected devices by 2020, according to Cisco. In a statement, Telefónica noted that as the deployment of smart metering accelerates globally, there will be increasing demand for solutions to address the significant challenges of managing a high volume of devices—establishing the foundations for the smart grid while also complying with regulation requirements.
Telefónica’s solution can be integrated with different access technologies, hardware vendors and back-end systems. It is built on top of Telefónica’s M2M technology and assets.
This is not Telefónica’s first move toward M2M. In September, the company made a a joint investment with La Caixa in addFleet, a company that specializes in making intelligent systems for transportation. At the time of the purchase, addFleet was preparing the international launch of a communications service based on M2M and cloud technology.
