Optimize your M2M SIM cards’ data usage – 5 top tips

We use connected machines to perform variety of different tasks, ranging from car sensors that enable pay-as-you-drive auto insurance to remote monitoring of equipments to GPS tracking that monitors where the vehicles/containers are and how they are doing. This technology is typically called machine-to-machine (M2M) communications and provides significant value involving dozens of industries, such as lowering service costs with remote access, efficient energy utilization through real-time monitoring and creating new revenue streams by selling differentiated services.

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Application Development Platforms used for M2M/IoT

M2M and IoT is emerging with a higher speed than expected. The ecosystem is becoming mature and the players know where to position themselves. As the ecosystem converges with Cloud and big data, businesses need to get ready to address the new wave of connected devices and the intelligence they carry. I do not believe in the story of collecting all intelligence in the center, via the data delivered by edge devices. Because the agility, durability and security of the edge devices will directly impact the results of the total intelligence.

Agility in my term defines the ability of a connected device to adapt different applications. This requires running a flexible software environment that caters for different application requirements.

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Machine to Machine

I should say for a Telecom operator to be successful on M2M requires some serious efforts. A dedicated M2M team (technical, support, operations, agreements, sales in the ground and a strong management etc), different KPIs and goals for the M2M unit, much more flexibility and support from the top management.

Europe is not doing fine economically and people are spending less and less on Telecom services. For Telcos to keep growing, they should invest in new areas like M2M, Cloud and Media & Entertainment Services. However, the success will not come quick and margins are not as good as we got in typical Telecom services. I see that more and more Telcos in Europe are taking serious steps in M2M and leaving the Cloud to IT providers; making M2M a bet of Telcos and Cloud for IT playes.

Teleco industry needs a new push and new units might bring that extra jump for growth. M2M is an opportunity for Telcos and for sure requires a different approach and skills. My recommendation is, select your fight and go for it. But do not expect quick wins.

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Internet of Things (IoT) Vs. M2M

I am part of the M2M global solutions team at a multinational Telecom company and one of our main goal is to follow the trends and make sure that the whole company is moving to the right directions. Being a Telecom company the first thing we want to win is of course the connectivity and also the device platform services.

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Profitable 4G (LTE) for Telcos

4G (LTE) is just super cool!

I have been using LTE for quite some while and I just love it. It is much faster than even fix line and I do not want to connect to any wi-fi just because my 4G is the best. Yes, this is how i feel about it as an end-user. I love it and I am willing to pay an amount that will not cost me an arm and a leg. But, what is that amount which Telecom operators should ask for?

As a group product manager in a multi-national Swedish telecom operator, this is what a lot of people around me are thinking about. I have made some observations and these are my conclusions for a profitable 4G (LTE) business for Telcos.

4G (LTE) Succcess Factors:
1- wide and functioning coverage
2- wide selection of 4G (LTE) handsets

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Open APIs for Enabling Cloud & M2M Services

Communications service providers (CSPs) are traditionally conservative, more focused on internal product innovation, targets mass-market services rather than niche-oriented. But  CSPs now have a strategic business challenge; they are not growing fast enough. Subscriber numbers are still growing at a high rate in the emerging markets, but this rate is much smaller in developed markets. Here in the Nordics, we see huge competition with brutal price wars and hopeless fight for growing market shares. Meanwhile, competition worldwide has increased tremendously and ARPU (avrg revenue per user) is not keeping pace with the additional network costs associated with modern time, high-bandwidth services like mobile TV, HD video and the likes.

Graph 1- Operators with a commercial web services offering, worldwide

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Telecom Trends 2013

Trends and buzzwords are everywhere. On the other hand the core business of Telcos is shrinking. In such an environment, it is hard to find new revenue sources and keep the revenue figures green. In my world a telco should drive the core business with 100% focus on sales, cost consciousness and internal efficiency however look for alternative revenue sources for the future. In the presentation below, I try to tease you a bit on what might be those alternative revenue sources for Telcos. If you have any questions or comments feel free to contact me. I hope you enjoy it!

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How to train your sales team efficiently

I have been training lots of sales teams on products that are newly launched or already on the market. I have met with real good sales people as well as regular ones. The only thing that was all same for any sales rep was the good results coming from the methodologies that I have applied at the beginning of the session. I will not go into the ways and methodologies I am using in this post but just wanted to share a lessons learned with you.

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What Does Convergence Mean?

I was thinking about the meaning of convergence in Telecom context this morning. I have came up to see this nice graph developed by VisionMobile. So what do you think are the vision, focal point and the compete based on will look like by 2015?

My guess is vision: connected devices, focal point: software/apps and compete based on: quality of content.

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Is Mobile Device Management an Opportunity for Telcos?

If you ask CTOs what are they looking to do to secure personal devices used at work, they generally talk about data encryption or MDM. Since data encryption is already widely used I think the real interesting thing is to understand what they are looking for in an MDM solution?

I think there the confusion starts. Should we then consider a mobile device managent, or mobile security solution or maybe a mobile application/data management tool?

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