Telefonica and Avea have formed an M2M collaboration agreement that will see them jointly develop and offer services to provide M2M roaming across their markets. The partnership will cover the provision of global M2M solutions, international roaming agreements between the two operators, and the joint development of technological standards.
Both operators said they would like to see other partners join the partnership to spread coverage.
The operators said the aim of the partnershp is to promote open standards and the interoperability of M2M their systems. Avea and Telefonica Digital, the Telefonica unit that manages its M2M business, will also combine M2M R&D and provide joint certification of devices. The alliance also covers the development of joint commercial and marketing endeavours— including services in fields such as transportation, smart cities, home automation,energy efficiency, mobile healthcare and industry.
Both operators will cooperate to promote open standards and the interoperability of M2M systems at an international level. This collaboration will also extend to R&D of M2M technologies and to joint certification of devices.
Telefónica and Avea added that they want to make the partnership open to other operators to join, to include a larger number of markets.
Carlos Morales, Director of M2M at Telefónica Digital said,“This cooperation with Avea will help us in further developing novel vertical solutions and widen our coverage. Telefónica will gain privilege access to the Turkish market whereas Avea will leverage on Telefónica´s capabilities of network coverage, long experience of providing wireless M2M communication solutions and its leading market position in core UE markets and Latin America.”
Kadir Boysan, Chief Strategy Officer of Avea,said, “‘The cooperation will provide all Avea customers, individual and corporate, with access to M2M services at global standards, and ensure the launching of brand new products and services to the market through the support of the R&D activities in Turkey. We intend to open up a new era in M2M communications for all our customers, individual and corporate, by means of our corporation with Telefónica.’
Last month Turkcell announced that it was creating an M2M platform to address M2M opportunities in the Turkish market. Avea is the first Turkish operator to have partnered at a roaming and sales level with another international operator. DT, FT and Telia-Sonera have their own M2M partnership serving their markets.