The Global M2M Association (GMA), a cooperation agreement in the Machine-to-Machine (M2M) sector between TeliaSonera, Orange and Deutsche Telekom, today announced the addition of Telecom Italia to the association. Through the GMA, four of the leading mobile operators in Europe can now collaborate to deliver best-in-class, enhanced and seamless M2M services, making it easier for businesses to deploy and manage M2M solutions and innovations around the world. The unique partnership provides global coverage with an unmatched European footprint of 28 countries, or 94 percent of the European population.
At the core of the GMA is a strong commitment by all partners to enable unsurpassed global M2M solutions across multiple sectors. Examples include traditional telemetering services, critical eHealth solutions, automotive commercial services and innovative services, such as consumer electronics connected devices. The cooperation agreement also provides customers with many business benefits, including roaming services for a seamless customer experience, enhanced interoperability, innovations and partnership development.
- seamless customer experience: Global customers seek seamless cross-border and multi-domestic M2M solutions. To facilitate a seamless customer experience, the GMA is committed to enhancing roaming quality of service through unified incident management processes, harmonized service level objectives and common procedures for fault reports or escalation.
- enhanced interoperability: All sorts of M2M modules are present in a wide range of devices. The GMA has created a module certification program to provide a unified and industrialized approach toward M2M product specifications, resulting in quicker and more optimized integration into customer machines and devices. Module certification will enable the most optimized interoperability between module and network.
- innovations and partnerships: The four companies are focused on further developing partnerships and fostering innovation by enabling M2M solutions and building a thriving M2M ecosystem with leading partners across the entire M2M value chain to provide customers with simplified services and faster go-to-market opportunities.
“We are excited to enter into this cooperation agreement with three key players in Europe, enabling us to offer the most comprehensive M2M solutions across all sectors,” said Lucy Lombardi, EVP Industry Relations & Cross Business Initiatives at Telecom Italia. “The GMA demonstrates our collective commitment for continued collaboration in the interest of our customers and the M2M ecosystem.”
Mario Polosa, Director of the M2M Project Office at Telecom Italia, added, “The M2M market is already moving quickly, with customers demanding harmonized service architectures without borders. We are firmly convinced that the GMA model is the best solution to consolidate and develop domestic and global opportunities together with our partners.”
About the Global M2M Association
Founded in February 2011, the Global M2M Association (GMA) is based on a service cooperation agreement between Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telecom Italia and TeliaSonera. The initiative’s main focus is to deliver best-in-class, enhanced and seamless M2M services globally and to maximize the business benefits of customers. The GMA aspires to help businesses and organizations to increase the availability of enhanced M2M solutions and innovations, and make them easier to deploy and manage all around the world.
Through this partnership, four of the leading mobile operators in Europe commit to offering customers enhanced quality of service, M2M roaming services and interoperability across an extended European footprint, by bringing together their technical and innovation capabilities. This unified and cohesive approach will enable to improve the incident and troubleshooting procedures and harmonize module standards through joint testing and certification.
About Telecom Italia Group
With 45.6 million customers in Italy and 96.7 million in Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, as at march 2013, Telecom Italia is Italy’s main ICT group and an important player on the Latin American market. Attention towards the needs of its customers and technological innovation are the Group’s hallmarks. Abroad Group’s focus is on South America. It operates in Argentina and Paraguay, providing fixed and mobile telephony services and internet through Telecom Argentina group, a mayor leading Telco operator, and in Brazil, where TIM Brasil, with 71.2 million mobile lines and 27% market share, is the second player in the country.
Further information: www.telecomitalia.com
About Deutsche Telekom
Deutsche Telekom is one of the world's leading integrated telecommunications companies with 133 million mobile customers, 32 million fixed-network lines and more than 17 million broadband lines (as of March 31, 2013). The Group provides products and services for the fixed network, mobile communications, the Internet and IPTV for consumers, and ICT solutions for business customers and corporate customers. Deutsche Telekom is present in around 50 countries and has 230,000 employees worldwide. The Group generated revenues of EUR 58.2 billion in the 2012 financial year - more than half of it outside Germany (as of December 31, 2012).
Further information for journalists at: www.telekom.com/media
About Orange
France Telecom-Orange is one of the world’s leading telecommunications operators with sales of 43.5 billion euros in 2012 and has 170,000 employees worldwide at 31 March 2013, including 104 000 employees in France. Present in 32 countries, the Group has a total customer base close to 230 million customers at 31 March 2013, including 172 million mobile customers and 15 million broadband internet (ADSL, fibre) customers worldwide. Orange is one of the main European operators for mobile and broadband internet services and, under the brand Orange Business Services, is one of the world leaders in providing telecommunication services to multinational companies.
With its industrial project, "conquests 2015", Orange is simultaneously addressing its employees, customers and shareholders, as well as the society in which the company operates, through a concrete set of action plans. These commitments are expressed through a new vision of human resources for employees; through the deployment of a network infrastructure upon which the Group will build its future growth; through the Group's ambition to offer a superior customer experience thanks in particular to improved quality of service; and through the acceleration of international development.
France Telecom (NYSE:FTE) is listed on NYSE Euronext Paris (compartment A) and on the New York Stock Exchange.
For more information (on the internet and on your mobile): www.orange.com, www.orange-business.com, www.orange-innovation.tv or to follow us on Twitter: @presseorange.
Orange and any other Orange product or service names included in this material are trademarks of Orange Brand Services Limited, Orange France or France Telecom.
About TeliaSonera
TeliaSonera provides network access and telecommunication services in the Nordic and Baltic countries, the emerging markets of Eurasia, including Russia and Turkey, and in Spain. TeliaSonera helps people and companies communicate in an easy, efficient and environmentally friendly way. Our ambition is to be number one or two in all our markets, providing the best customer experience, high quality networks and cost efficient operations. TeliaSonera is also the leading European wholesale provider with a wholly-owned international carrier network. In 2012, net sales amounted to SEK 105 billion, EBITDA to SEK 36.1 billion and earnings per share to SEK 4.59. The TeliaSonera share is listed on NASDAQ OMX Stockholm and NASDAQ OMX Helsinki. Read more at www.teliasonera.com.
