Summary Bullets:

• U.S. mobile operators can charge SMBs and enterprises high prices for business services, as B2B pricing is custom and there are few alternative carriers.
• A few resellers bundle fixed and mobile services; B2B MVNOs with an array of pricing options and value-added services are hard to find.

AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile have the luxury of being considered the only serious choices in the U.S. for quasi-ubiquitous wireless coverage, access to international roaming services, handset sales and value-added services for businesses. Enterprise pricing is also highly customized and does not have much to do with the list prices available on the carriers’ standardized price sheets. There are a handful of wireless resellers and MVNOs (such as Cbeyond and Granite) that have added wireless plans and devices to fixed services offers for SMB bundles. However, it is hard to find pure-play B2B MVNOs that are serious alternatives to the big four. Continue reading “Where Are All the U.S. B2B MVNOs?” →

Summary Bullets:

• Vodafone announced this week that it was partnering with NTT DOCOMO for M2M opportunities. The Japanese operator is also part of the M2M World Alliance made up of many operators that use the Jasper Wireless service delivery platform.
•  According to the GSMA, while North American and European together generate 46% of connections, the Asia-Pacific region was responsible for 42% of global M2M connections in 2013 (with China alone generating 27% of global traffic).

A lot of M2M alliance activity centers around Asia-Pacific these days, with NTT DOCOMO, SingTel and Telstra part of the M2M World Alliance and SoftBank the newest member of the Global M2M Alliance founded by Deutsche Telekom, Orange and TeliaSonera. The Bridge Alliance, made up of Asia-Pac mobile operators offering multi-country mobility services, also recently disclosed it was expanding into M2M. Telefonica and China Unicom have been going to market together for M2M since 2011. In addition, Telenor and KDDI announced an M2M partnership last week. Interestingly, some of the largest operators such as Vodafone and AT&T had not formally disclosed M2M partnerships that provide expanded footprint for M2M MNC deals (as well as joint certification and formal escalation processes). However, this week, Vodafone formally expanded its M2M initiatives in Asia-Pac with a deal with NTT DOCOMO. Continue reading “M2M Alliances Look to the East” →

Summary Bullets:

• This year’s Axeda Connexion conference featured presentations and booths showing Axeda solutions, offerings from its partners and other M2M ecosystem players, and case studies from customers (i.e., enterprises that have deployed M2M solutions).
• While enthusiastically promoting M2M, the event was balanced, offering examples of obstacles as well as opportunities.

This year’s Axeda Connexion conference, held in Boston on May 5-8, was put on by one of the industry’s most established and well-known M2M application platform providers and was (as it always is) chock-full of insights, stats, tidbits of interesting information and, best of all, actual enterprise customer stories. The event (which included about 600 attendees) featured many presentations by Axeda itself, including a technical track on the latest enhancements to its platform. It also included presentations and panel discussions with major operator partner AT&T, often together with its new M2M customer, Emerson, which took advantage of the Axeda platform when developing its ‘smart cart’ connected healthcare solution for hospitals. While many M2M events are heavily ‘supply-side,’ Axeda always showcases its customers, who provide real-world and detailed examples of successful deployments. Axeda Connexion is also one of the few M2M events that has a good sampling of enterprises in attendance which may be already planning or running M2M deployments. Every year, Axeda also adds a new level to its iconic diagram of the different stages of M2M; this year, it delineated level number 10, described as ‘harmonization,’ a level at which nations and governments will share data beyond country borders to help solve global problems (think ‘saving the rainforest’ or finding Malaysia Airlines flight 370). Continue reading “Live from Axeda Connexion: M2M Enthusiasm Tempered with Reality” →

Summary Bullets:

• Current Analysis was recently briefed by seven mobile operators on their latest managed mobility services.
•  While their portfolios have many elements in common, there remain a few key differentiators.

Every time Current Analysis completes its updates on the global managed mobility services market, there are a number of service elements or sound bites with which to position portfolios that sound increasingly similar. For example, all operators now have several platform options for mobile device management, and most are also leveraging the mobile application management and enterprise app store functionality (and increasingly the app-wrapping or other form of containerization) of their platform partners. Most operators also still offer TEM; a few have MEAP platforms offered as a service while others offer sets of pre-built mobile apps; yet others will do end-to-end mobile application development. Mobile security also has some variation, as some operators view their MDM services as synonymous with their mobile security offerings while others offer a continuum of add-on security capabilities and software partner add-ons or do a lot of custom mobile security engagements. As for positioning, there remains a common view of the near future where, at least as an option, all managed mobility elements are multi-carrier, are offered from the operator’s cloud, and have been integrated into the same service, with a common UI and with all elements viewable and manageable from the same portal; there is also sharing of all data from each service in a shared database to be able to do more analytics and even real-time analysis of usage. Many operators have done some of this kind of integration or plan to do so. Continue reading “Are There Still Differentiators in Managed Mobility?” →

Summary Bullets:

• Back in the olden days (2000-2007), there were close to a dozen M2M connectivity aggregators that were the primary companies selling M2M connectivity to businesses.
• The market has changed substantially, with the mobile operators selling mostly direct, but many of the original set of MVNOs are alive and well and going way beyond connectivity to stay relevant.

When M2M first became a recognized market for cellular connectivity in the early 2000s, operators saw it as a wholesale opportunity, letting MVNOs sell to business customers, especially for small-to-mid-sized deals.  In those days, the primary use cases were sensor data collection, machine automation, fleet management, home security monitoring and some cellular point-of-sale and ATM connections.  Satellite service providers were also in the mix, collecting data from far flung or ‘hostile’ remote locations.  In 2005, there were about a dozen cellular connectivity aggregators/MVNOs (several of which claimed from the beginning that since they owned their own network elements, they weren’t really MVNOs, but carriers, which is technically true).  The big ones were Jasper Wireless (no longer an MVNO), Wyless, Aeris.net, RACO Wireless, Kore Telematics, Numerex, Orbcomm and Jazz Wireless. Continue reading “M2M MVNO Update: Going Up the Value Chain” →