Rating: AT&T’s success in M2M down to partnerships
In a newly released report, analyst firm – Pyramid Research, argues that mobile network operators will need to be more flexible in their approach to tariffing for M2M (Machine-to-Machine) if they are to be successful in this rapidly expanding market. The report is entitled, ‘Operator M2M Success Hinges on Flexible Pricing’ and according to lead author, Sylwia Boguszewska, a senior analyst with Pyramid Research, “We expect the operators will introduce a greater degree of price tiering because M2M will serve a larger number of verticals, some of them more data-hungry than others.” Consequently the report predicts that M2M pricing will move away from a fixed price to a mixture of flexible and tailor-made tariffs.To compile the report, Pyramid looked at a number of operators’ M2M commercial offerings, and analysed the pricing strategies of Tier 1 mobile operators across 14 different markets.
In the report, Pyramid Research includes acase study of US-based mobile operator, AT&T, which iPyramid claims is currently one of the most successful operators in the M2M sphere.
The reason that AT&T has proved so successful is thanks to its policy of establishing close partnerships.
Its success is evidenced through its customer list which includes the likes of Hertz, BWM, Amazon, and USA Technologies.
“At the moment, AT&T’s view of the M2M market is driven by cost-reduction strategies in shipping and logistics, industrial automation, residential and commercial buildings, and fleet telematics,” said Sylwia Boguszewska.
Theses verticals are characterised by low data usage consumption per device and lower ARPS levels,” she continued.
“Now AT&T plans to take advantage of global roaming agreements. With this in mind, AT&T is expanding into new areas such as solar panel, smart grid monitoring and remote healthcare.”
In February 2011, AT&T announced four major partnership deals. The list includes cloud-based M2M platform provider Axeda, which has footing in the industrial, medical, retail, IT, banking and government sectors.
Other partners are ILS Technology – providing monitoring and analytical maintenance applications in the building automation, energy management, data centre and industrial markets.
Additionally, there is a tie up with SensorLogic – dedicated to fleet management, plus Sierra Wireless which is the developer of the AirVantage cloud-based service.
In addition to AT&T, Pyramid takes a look at two additional operators in emerging markets: – Movistar Mexico and MTS Russia, in the report.
The report costs $595 can be downloaded from here.
