11 Leading Asia Pacific Mobile Operators From Bridge Alliance Form Region’s Largest M2M Alliance

11 leading Asia Pacific mobile operators today form the region’s largest Machine-to-Machine (M2M) alliance to offer a ‘one-stop-shop’ experience for M2M deployment across the Asia Pacific region. Bridge M2M Alliance is a centre of excellence for M2M services and solutions to attract partnerships and provide customers with an end-to-end M2M regional capability.

Bridge M2M Alliance comprises members of Bridge Alliance and is made up of Airtel (India), AIS (Thailand), CSL (Hong Kong), Globe Telecom (Philippines), Maxis (Malaysia), MobiFone (Vietnam), Optus (Australia), SingTel (Singapore), SK Telecom (South Korea), Taiwan Mobile (Taiwan) and Telkomsel (Indonesia). Together, the group serves a combined base of over 500 million subscribers, making it the largest M2M alliance in the Asia Pacific region.

With its Bridge M2M Alliance partnership, Maxis’ Managed M2M service is able to better support the M2M requirements of major multi-national companies beyond Malaysia in a seamless manner. Maxis is already addressing customer needs for cross-border services such as M2M roaming required for sectors such as transportation and logistics, which complement its existing M2M offerings.

T Kugan, Maxis’ Head of Digital Services, said: “M2M is an important pillar of our digital strategy serving a wide range of Enterprise customers. Being the only telco in Malaysia to be part of this initiative gives us a strategic advantage in our local market, and our customers can look forward to comprehensive regional geographical coverage and superior service.

“Moving forward, we plan to enrich our service offerings by exploring other parts of the M2M value chain so that we can provide end-to-end tailored M2M solutions for selected customer segments with superior customer support.”

Bridge M2M Alliance eliminates the complexity of dealing with multiple operators by offering seamless delivery of regional M2M services across geographical borders. The Alliance will also improve customers’ service experience through enhanced interoperability, service levels and customer support.

Alessandro Adriani, CEO of Bridge Alliance, noted: “Asia is made up of highly varied economies, uneven technological development and diversified regulatory requirements. As a result, multinational businesses find it extremely difficult to navigate the intricacies of the region and to fully capitalise on economies of scale. The evolution of Bridge Alliance in the M2M business is an indication of the commitment from the 11 operators to overcome these challenges for the success of customers’ businesses.”

The M2M partnership covers commercial as well as technological cooperation across various industries such as vehicle telemetry, security, energy management, etc. This enables the development of new business models, creation of new products and services and reduction in customers’ operational costs. The alliance is determined to build an innovative ecosystem by partnering technology players in the M2M value chain like application developers, module manufacturers and service providers.

Alliance members will continuously cooperate to secure significant commercial benefits and economies of scale for customers and enable joint product development initiatives. Being key operators in the respective countries, they are well placed to leverage and support multinational companies hoping to ride on Asia’s growth, as well as Asian companies looking to expand globally.