M2M: The future of technology

We are all living in a connected world today thanks to the wired and wireless communications systems around us. In a country like India, where adoption of wired technology has not been commendable, mobile services have filled the gap.
Moreover, with the coming of technologies such as WiMax and 3G, we will be stepping into a more advanced world, and our economy will start adopting futuristic technologies in its day to day processes.
Since we are talking about the future, there is a particular technology that will drive the processes and will generate huge revenues for its stakeholders, provided the industry starts taking interest.
This technology is nothing but a system of communication between both wired and wireless devices or machines, which is known as machine to machine (M2M) communication.
Imagine a world where your home appliances or your enterprise devices are communicating with another machine, for example a personal computer, which is updating you of the remaining inventory and is suggesting that you buy more groceries or more raw materials for your house and business, respectively.
As per a report by Juniper Research, "M2M market includes just about every object with an embedded mobile SIM card, excluding mobile phones.
M2M applications are being deployed around the world, mainly in enterprises, buildings, vehicles etc. The consumer use of these applications has still not taken off. They are mainly being used for video surveillance, remote monitoring, data gathering and automation.
Applications of M2MMostly, SMSs are being used for M2M communications due to their relatively low cost.
Juniper predicts that the number of mobile connected M2M and embedded devices will reach almost 412 million globally by 2014. The growth of these embedded devices will mainly come from an ever increasing number of utility meters, mobile connected buildings, consumer and commercial telematics and retail and banking connections.
It also says that M2M in the healthcare market could see among the biggest growths over the next few years, when healthcare monitoring applications will start being rolled out from 2012.M
According to ABI Research, mobile M2M applications have traditionally only required relatively low data rate connections, for which 2G technologies such as GPRS have been perfectly adequate.
In 2006 however, high speed wireless M2M applications such as video surveillance, remote information display, and in-vehicle camera systems began to be deployed, requiring 3G technologies such as HSDPA and CDMA EV-DO, as well as WiMax.
M2M technology manufacturersMotorola India offers a range of M2M wireless modules which support all technologies. Its modules support GSM/GPRS LGA, CDMA 1X, HSPA, Java etc.
Accenture too provides a slew of M2M applications. It offers vehicle tracking solutions such as automotive solutions for driver safety, behaviour control and entertainment, fleet monitoring and theft prevention; mobile health and safety solutions such as remote health monitoring, personal safety, and surveillance; mobile data collection solutions such as automating traditional paper based processes and capturing data remotely.
CanvasM, a leading player in the mobile value added services area, also believes in M2M and has invested in M2M R&D. It has developed a few proofs of concepts for demonstration to potential customers.
M2M market potentialPrabha Aithal, chief technology officer, CanvasM, tells Telecom Yatra, "The market for M2M apps is very huge, in the range of $5 billion to $6 billion for this year. M2M market overall could potentially be larger than both mobile and internet space in 3-4 years.
The company is talking to a few telcos in North America for these apps. "We are working closely with one operator to qualify M2M devices for features, functionality and apps through our state of the art certification lab in Noida,” says Aithal.
Indian telecom operators have still not started looking at this revenue generating stream in a big way. The delay in 3G roll out is also not an obstacle for these applications as most of them do not require high bandwidth. Operators could tie up with M2M companies to offer embedded devices for M2M applications, as this is an extremely attractive revenue proposition.
Of the few telcos that have M2M applications in their portfolio, Reliance Communications is taking this segment quite seriously and is using these applications for enabling its rural value added services - Grameen VAS. The company uses M2M apps for automation of agro and irrigation services, water level monitoring, and data gathering for milk and agri-cooperatives, fisheries, poultry, and soil analysis.
It also sees similar opportunities for urban areas, including mobile ticketing, purchase at kiosks and vending machines, and remote monitoring of office automation products.
Aithal says, "I believe that M2M will do well in the utility and automobile space in India and also outside India. In counties such as USA, most of the utility meter reading is retrieved remotely using M2M modules integrated with the utility meters and large number of vehicles embedded with the M2M modems for vehicle monitoring, tracking, navigations and emergency responses.
According to him, most companies will start entering this space and will develop more than 90 per cent of the apps in the M2M space in the near future as there is a dearth of apps in the market place now.