Alcatel-Lucents ng Connect program is a bold, cross-industry experiment. The idea is to get as many companies as possible involved in developing machine-to-machine communications with new technologies. Focusing on upcoming broadband tech like LTE, ng Connect is aiming at building a real ecosystem of devices, content and apps that can easily communicate and share info with one another. At CTIA today, the program announced that four new companies are joining: Atlantic Records, Kyocera Communications Inc, LearningMate and MediaTile.
Launched in February 2009, ng Connect now has eighteen companies involved. The new members are:
Atlantic Records – massive, mulit-national record label. You may have heard of them.
Kyocera Communications Inc. – sales, marketing and service organization for Kyocera and Sanyo-branded wireless devices in the Americas.
LearningMate - provider of e-Learning education solutions in the USA, UK and India.
MediaTile – supplier of cellular digital signage and kiosk solutions.
From the release:
“We are really pleased with the tremendous industry interest in the ng Connect Program generated in just a few short months since our launch,” said Derek Kuhn, vice president of Emerging Technology and Media, Alcatel-Lucent. “The ng Connect program is making great progress signing up new members who are actively working together to build an open ecosystem that we know can bring whole new classes of services to market; services that can leverage the growing capabilities of service-aware IP networks, IMS and more.”
What we think?
We were first introduced to the ng Connect program shortly before MWC. I thought it was a good idea then, and I think it’s a good idea now. For it to really take off, it needs an awful lot of companies on board. A major problem I see from the list of people involved is that there’s no operator presence. Furthering the cause of more fluent machine-to-machine operations over broadband is all very well, but the people who facilitate those communications have to be involved as well.
More details about the actual projects some of these companies are working on can be found here:
