Telefonica UK's use of Jasper Wireless' M2M platform will enable the operator to offer its customers more real time control of their services, Gilli Coston, Head of M2M at Telefónica UK, told Mobile Europe.
Coston said that the deployment had been described as the "holy grail" by one customer who had previously felt limited by the ability of O2's existing M2M service to scale quickly.
O2 has been running an M2M business in the UK for 15 years, Coston said, but the decision to use Jasper's platform had added to is ability to support its customers. "We had some good capabilities but we wanted to give our customers the ability to access self-service in real time to troubleshoot issues and problems straight away. Our customers have gone from monthly billing to being able to see on a per-second and daily basis what's really happening on the network. This enables customers to have visibility, control and management of the day to day business, rather than having to rely heavily on external customer services and environments," Costan said.
Coston added that O2 is not looking to the use of the Jasper platform as a means to boost revenue per customer.
"We are not looking to make additional revenue from it. It's really about improving and giving a great customer experience and therefore enabling this market to grow more, and enable our business and customer business to have confidence to keep growing," she said.
Coston cited the example of one customer who told her that its biggest worry was that they would get a big order. "That's the thing they want to happen… but they feared for their ability to scale and have confidence in the systems around M2M. That customer actually said to me, 'This is the holy grail that we've been looking for, and have scoured the market for'."
Macario Namie, Jasper Wireless, said that experience reflected Jasper's design philosophy, which is to provide customers with the ability to build and scale their connected device businesses.
"We provide diagnostics to resolve issues with devices in the field: rules based automation so they can automate their business processes without having to monitor individual devices for anomalous behaviour. What these customers really need is not just an penny here or there but the wherewithal to grow their businesses significantly and to start removing barriers and inhibitors," Namie said.