11 leading Asia Pacific mobile operators from Bridge Alliance form region’s largest M2M alliance

27 January 2014 – 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.

DiGi Challenge for Change's first ever #IdeaJam produces stronger ideas for more impactful mobile apps

Gathers idea contributors and industry experts to strengthen potential mobile app ideas

Last Friday, DiGi Telecommunications Sdn Bhd (DiGi) hosted #IdeaJam, the first ever idea accelerator session for its Challenge for Change (DiGiCFC) programme. This 4-hour interactive event gathered about 150 people including the Challenge's best 60 idea contributors together with industry experts to refine the quality and potential of these ideas, in a bid to identify the season's top 20.

Today, these shortlisted 20 ideators pitched their ideas to DiGi and a panel of judges consisting of DiGiCFC partners, who then selected a winning idea for each of the four categories: namely Learning & Edutainment, Health & Wellness, Discovering Culture, and Connected Citizen. The four winners, who will each go home with RM5,000 and a smartphone, will be announced in mid-February this year.

Joachim Rajaram, Head of Communication and Corporate Responsibility together with the Top 20 ideators.

The 60 ideators for #IdeaJam were selected from close to 2,600 Malaysian-inspired mobile application ideas submitted for the Ideation Challenge, the first phase of DiGiCFC.

Stronger ideas for better social and commercial impact
#IdeaJam was a development checkpoint to help augment the quality of the top ideas submitted for Challenge for Change, and maximise the potential impact of the resulting mobile apps. It provided a conducive platform for ideators to interact with 60 specially selected mentors from the respective fields of healthcare, education, culture and citizenship. Input from the mentors helped build a social and technical context surrounding each idea, helping ideators make these ideas more compelling: having stronger commercial value, and a greater ability to address the social needs of Malaysians.

Joachim Rajaram, DiGi's Head of Communications and Corporate Responsibility said, "We were impressed with the quality of ideas submitted for season five of the Challenge. We felt these ideas clearly reflected what Malaysians want in general, using mobile internet and apps to serve their needs. It was also interesting to note that easy access to public services on mobile apps seemed to be a growing interest amongst Malaysians. This was evident from the high percentage of submissions for the newly introduced Connected Citizens category.

Ideators pitching their idea to the mentors during the #IdeaJam session.

"It would be exciting to observe how these ideas now evolve into full-fledged apps that leverage on functionalities like gaming, M2M and social networking to name a few, and to see how well-received these apps will be. We hope that the availability of new and relevant local content will give people more reasons to use and benefit from the internet, in line with DiGi's mission to deliver internet for all Malaysian mobile users," said Joachim.

"It was also fantastic to see the positive energy between the mentors and ideators as they sparred with each other with a single objective in mind, to have the best version of these ideas emerge and have the potential to be developed into mobile apps that benefit as many Malaysians as possible. And this, I believe captured the value of DiGiCFC's theme in Bringing Malaysians Together, One App At A Time," he added.

Some of the mentors who attended the event included representatives from the National Heritage Board Malaysia, KPJ HealthCare, Macrokiosk, GBG Business Group, netpreneurs, and Malaysian internet players.

Moving on to the next stage
Following this, DiGiCFC5 will proceed to the App Development phase where local app developers will be tasked to develop mobile apps based on the four winning ideas. In conjunction with this second phase, DiGi will also host #HACK!@DiGiCFC, a 36-hour non-stop mobile app hackathon to help accelerate the app development process.

DiGiCFC5 programme partners include the Performance Management and Delivery Unit (PEMANDU), 1Malaysia for Youth (iM4U), the National Digital Economy Initiative (Digital Malaysia), Google Malaysia and Microsoft Malaysia.

More information on this phase and DiGi Challenge for Change is available at www.digicfc.my.

Dialog AXIATA to launch enterprise m2m self-service solution with Ericsson in Sri Lanka

• Dialog Axiata has chosen Ericsson to provide M2M connectivity delivered as a service 
• Ericsson’s Device Connection Platform will give Dialog great flexibility in developing innovative M2M products and services for enterprises in Sri Lanka
• Dialog Axiata currently addresses M2M services across diverse vertical industries, including utilities, finance, telematics and transport 

Sri Lanka’s premier connectivity provider, Dialog Axiata, is set to implement the Ericsson Device Connection Platform, delivered as a service by Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC). The solution will provide Dialog Axiata and its customers with everything they need to deploy, manage and monetize millions of machine-to-machine (M2M) connections. Dialog Axiata has been at the forefront of innovation in the telecommunications industry and is the first in Sri Lanka to launch an M2M platform.

Jeremy Huxtable, Group Chief Officer at Dialog Enterprise said: “We want our customers to benefit from state-of-the-art functionalities to deploy, scale, and operate millions of M2M connections. M2M also allows for simplified and improved processes, and this brings us a step forward in capitalizing on existing assets to drive market leadership of M2M in Sri Lanka.”

Todd Ashton, President of Ericsson Malaysia and Sri Lanka.

The Ericsson Device Connection Platform will enable Dialog Axiata to increase revenue and cut both operational costs and time–to-market. The platform will allow Dialog's enterprise customers to monitor devices anytime and anywhere, access information quickly and accurately, and integrate easily into existing systems over the complete device life cycle.

Ericsson will also use its local and global consulting and systems integration expertise to accelerate Dialog's M2M go-to-market plans. Alongside this, the ecosystem created by the Ericsson Device Connection Platform will help generate business growth for the operator as well as its customers and partners.

In a world of 50 billion connected devices as envisaged by Ericsson, many devices will communicate with applications and control systems using mobile networks. Both enterprises and consumers will make use of numerous everyday devices that benefit from M2M connectivity at home, at work, on the move, in remote locations and elsewhere.

Todd Ashton, President of Ericsson Malaysia and Sri Lanka, said: “Ericsson continues to be a committed business partner to Dialog Axiata and we are very pleased to work with them to bring our Networked Society vision to life in Sri Lanka.  We see a world with 50 billion connected devices in the next few years, and our platform will allow Dialog Axiata and its customers to take advantage of these connections.

“Dialog Axiata customers will benefit from continuous and sustainable, long-term competitive solutions based on Ericsson’s global service leadership and R&D capabilities, ensuring efficient and reliable connectivity for their devices.”

Ericsson has been a key contributer to the rapidly evolving M2M industry. Among Ericsson’s many awards in this area of industry, recent accolades include the 2012 M2M Evolution Product of the Year for its Connected Vehicle Cloud, the 2012 Smart Grid Product of the Year Award for its Smart Grid Communications Management solution, and the 2012 Network and Communications Award for its innovative solution for Smart Meter Communications.

P1 LOOKS FORWARD TO NEXT GENERATION 4G TECHNOLOGY IN 2013

PETALING JAYA, (19th Dec. 2012) – South East Asia’s pioneer and Malaysia’s first 4G service provider, Packet One Networks (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd. (“P1”) looks forward to another significant year ahead as the next generation 4G technology, Long-Term-Evolution (LTE), gears up momentum.

Summary 2012
The formation of Global TD-LTE Initiative (GTI) in February 2011 has gained tremendous support from the operators. In less than 2 years, over 50 operators have joined GTI and a total of 12 commercial TD-LTE networks were launched globally. The industry is clearly seeing a rapid adoption of this next generation 4G technology.

On the home front, 2012 was an exciting year where we saw exciting introduction of smart mobile devices such as Samsung Galaxy S3 and Note II; Apple’s Iphone 5 and Mini Ipad; Microsoft’s Windows 8 smartphone and many more. Simultaneously, we saw operators showcasing trials on 4G LTE technology as well as discussions amongst operators on further strategic collaborations.  

Michael Lai, Chief Executive Officer of P1 said, “For a four year old toddler in the broadband business, P1 has established itself as the leading 4G player in both Malaysia and South East Asia. Being appointed as one of the nine Steering Committee Members of GTI representing Malaysia and South East Asia, we look forward to continue playing a major role in contributing to TD-LTE development in the region.

2012 has been a significant year for P1 as we surpassed the half a million subscriber base mark; expanded network coverage to East Malaysia starting with the state of Sabah; were awarded the allocation on 20Mhz of 2.6Ghz spectrum to roll out 4G LTE.”

Outlook 2013
Next year will be an interesting and significant year, as we will see the next generation 4G technology – both Time-Division (TD) and Frequency-Division (FD) Long-Term-Evolution gear up momentum.

Lai elaborated, “The year 2013 will be an exciting year. Firstly, we will see an active movement for 4G LTE’s DNA (Device, Network and Application). Be it TD or FD version of 4G LTE, telecommunications operators will start to embrace the technology. Thus we will see active deployments worldwide.

Additionally, 4G-enabled smart devices will start making inroads from the second half of 2013 and small screen will continue to dominate the mobile broadband space. As IDC 2013 predictions reported, smart mobile devices (smartphones, tablets, eReaders), will grow by almost 20% in 2013 and generate nearly 57% of the industry's overall growth. While for mobile, broadband’s applications, it will continue to take advantage and push the limits of 4G network and devices.

Secondly, ‘co-opetition’ among operators will become even stronger due to the scarcity of spectrum. For operators to fully tap into the true potential of 4G LTE, spectrum will be key. For instance, you need at least 40MHz of spectrum to fully tap into the technology potential of LTE-Advanced which offers 1Gbps speed. Hence, without the luxury of unlimited spectrum, many operators would have to join forces to face the onslaught of what I called the perpetual data tsunami.

Thirdly Cloud, M2M (Man-to-Man, Man-to-Machine and Machine-to-Machine) and MobileApps services are poised to take-off in the new 4G world. All the above mentioned have been talked about but have yet to showcase its full potential due to one main reason: ubiquity of high-speed mobile broadband. With the launch of 4G LTE, it will truly bring the benefits of Cloud, M2M and MobileApps services to life. Imagine the joy of downloading a 50MB file into your smartphone in just a minute or watching a high-definition Psy’s Gangnam Style Youtube music video on-the-go. The availability of 4G LTE is set to eliminate the barriers of businesses to adopting ICT. In the near future businesses do not have to own costly IT equipment when cloud, M2M and MobileApps services are all they need. These services are available mostly on subscription basis, thus reducing their operation cost tremendously.

At P1, we will focus on three areas in 2013. First, we will continue to expand and enhance our nationwide 4G coverage and rolling out TD-LTE. Second, we aim to support and help mobilise local business community, especially SMEs, to fully tap into the convergence of ICT. This will give SMEs the competitive advantage locally and globally. Last but not least, we will continue to bring innovative services using 4G, Fiber, SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) and Wireless Internet Leased Line to benefit both consumers and businesses,” Lai concluded.