Telekom Austria has formed a dedicated company to address the M2M market. The new subsidiary will act as the operator’s competence and service centre for all M2M activities, working at Group level. Telekom Austria has confirmed to Mobile Europe that the unit will start with about 500,000 SIMs under management, as a result of the operator’s existing M2M activities.
The business, known as Telekom Austria Group M2M, will focus on eight application areas: automotive, consumer electronics, health care, logistics and transportation, retail and payments, security and surveillance, industrial and smart business as well as energy and utilities.
The unit will be run by Bernd Liebscher. “The Telekom Austria Group has been a long-standing and reliable partner for communications solutions in the business customer segment. We are now bundling our extensive know-how in terms of data communications and billing systems for a new emerging field of business,” Liebscher said.
Telekom Austria said that the M2M business will aim to provide its customers with “industry know-how along the entire value chain” from product design to the implementation and operation of M2M solutions.
Telekom Austria said its would have a focus on international corporate customers across its central and southern European markets. The business unit is also responsible for steering and coordinating individual initiatives in the local companies.
Q&A with Telekom Austria on its new M2M business unit:
How big will the unit be?
For TAG (Telekom Austria Group), leveraging the existing resources throughout all OpCos is key, especially when it comes to technical experts and sales. Considering the entire OpCo ecosystem within TAG, the total number of experts working on M2M is currently around 200 people.
Strong alignment is taking place constantly, especially within the vertical industries and the respective account managers, which all in all amount to about 150 people out of those 200.
TAG M2M is currently recruiting people to be employed directly at this competence center, and targets a mid two digit number by middle of next year.
Are there any partners, developers, etc that Telekom Austria already knows it will be working with?
For M2M we leverage the existing network of solution partners, but also aim to further extend our partner network beyond the borders of our traditional footprint and establish a network of best-in-class partners. We are working with our existing partners in all our operating companies and will announce further partnerships as soon as we are agreed on the terms of reference.
A clear differentiator is, that TAG M2M actively manages and services its partnerships by expert employees dedicated exclusively to the maintenance and development of the relations.
For the time being Telekom Austria Group M2M GmbH approaches about half a million SIM-Cards and records a 50% growth in SIM volume for year to date.
Has Telekom-Austria looked at joining the Deutsche Telekom/ FT Orange/ Telia-Sonera M2M interoperability alliance.
The Telekom Austria Group M2M GmbH closely looks at the current ecosystem and evaluates and decides each opportunity on a case-to-case basis. For the time being there has been no decision taken regarding the M2M interop alliance, but any future alliances and partnerships will be announced to the public as soon as they are agreed.