The Juniper Research Blog

Deutsche Telekom vendor alliance reinforces operator commitment to M2M

by Anthony Cox on February 8th, 2010

It is interesting to note some of the elements included in Deutsche Telekom’s recently announced collaboration with equipment vendor Telit for M2M (Machine to Machine) applications. A press release from the two companies on February 4 alludes to an international focus, identifies the need for simplified and standardised products, and identifies specific target markets- notably telematics, fleet management, navigation, smart metering (remote metering), vending machines and security segments.

These are, without doubt, the areas that will drive the M2M market, though others will doubtless emerge in time, notably health monitoring for chronic diseases. As well as identifying promising segments though, operators need to commit to the M2M industry in its own right, rather than as an add-on to their existing subscriber business, which may have been the case with some operators in the past. While it may not have the impressive ARPU that traditional subscribers have, M2M will have other important attributes, such as much lower churn and potentially higher subscriber numbers.

Vendor alliances like this one between Deutsche Telekom and Telit seem to demonstrate exactly this kind of operator commitment. What exactly Deutsche Telekom’s MOU with Telit will result in long term depends on many things, not least the depth of the relationship. From Deutsche Telekom’s point of view, though, it may be wise to form as many alliances as it can with M2M specialists. And the Telit announcement comes close on the heals of another announcement- an MoU with Huawei Deutschland to jointly develop and market M2M services in Germany.