Turkcell has joined the likes of Deutsche Telekom and Telia Sonera by forming a machine to machine (M2M) “platform”, uniting all the M2M solutions provided to its corporate customers under an M2M Umbrella. The operator said it currently has 750,000 Tukcells SIMs on the M2M platform, but added there are “potentially” 150 million devices that could be connected to its platform in Turkey.
If it did achieve that level of penetration, Turkcell claimed it would enable considerable benefits not just for itself, but for the Turkish economy as a whole. The operator said that its M2M solutions contributed TRY318 million to the Turkish economy through savings in 2011, an amount the operator plans to double 2012 through the depolyment of its M2M services on a platform basis.
In a bullish quote, Chief Corporate Business Officer Selen Kocabas said, “Currently, there are 750,000 Turkcell SIM Cards on the M2M platform. There are 150 million devices potentially to be connected on the wireless platform in Turkey. This connectedness could generate savings of up to a trillion TRY. We believe that this is not a dream, but on the contrary, a reality poised to increase companies’ competitive edge and contribute to our country’s economy through the effective use of public resources.”
Turkcell said the contribution from Turkcell’s four main M2M lines in 2011 was as follows:
- Smart Energy: Collection of electricity, water, gas index readings through an M2M SIM card, thereby decreasing the energy loss and theft. Smart solutions on energy metering reduced electricity loss/theft by 8% and for water by 15%. Savings on electricity and water amounted to approximately TRY28 million, while those for gas reached approximately TRY0.5 million.
- Smart Buildings: Maintaining climate control via mobile phone interfaces and managing security systems at homes and offices.
- Smart Industry Solutions: Maintaining and controlling temperature/humidity levels on farms, climate control systems in greenhouses, irrigation systems in agricultural fields. Managing the number of sales, stock quantity and money amount in vending machines, and thus providing a 10% fuel saving through route optimizations for stock management and logistics. Enabling POS transactions traffic through the GPRS/GSM network in the mobile environment. Water savings on automated remote watering reached 20%, increasing the efficiency of greenhouses. The contribution of smart industry solutions amounted to TRY1.5 million.
- Smart Vehicles/Telematics: Tracking of vehicles and fleets 24/7, defining new routes to meet changing demand patterns, and thus decreasing fuel consumption by 15%. The saving provided through smart vehicles amounted to approximately TRY288 million