Swisscom partners with Ericsson for M2M

Swisscom, a telecom operator of Switzerland and Ericsson have jointly launched a partnership to develop machine to machine (M2M) market.

Swisscom will offer enterprises with services to harness efficiencies along their customer's value chain, from production to distribution.

The company's M2M offering is based on Ericsson's device connection platform, which allows for cost-efficient management of a large number of connected devices and machines.

The first trials will start in February 2012, with the commercial introduction of services to commence in Summer of 2012.

Swisscom predictions depict that the addressable market will comprise up to 100 million connected devices and machines in Switzerland alone.

The industries that benefit from M2M communication are typically utilities, government, transport and healthcare, but the potential for its use extends well beyond that.

''We are entering this partnership - in which Ericsson supports us not only with its M2M connectivity platform, but also with its extensive experience of the worldwide M2M market. Our ambition is to provide enterprise customers with a scalable, easy-to-configure-and-maintain, telecom-grade solution that helps them to leverage the full potential of their M2M connectivity and gain a competitive advantage,'' said Urs Schaeppi, Head of Swisscom Corporate Business Unit.

The device connection platform cloud service will allow Swisscom to grow flexibly according to demand from its enterprise customers from different industries.

''We are partnering with Swisscom in one of the world's first large-scale M2M market introductions. We have connected billions of people to date with mobile networks. Now we are starting to address the Networked Society with our vision of more than 50 billion connected devices- primarily from M2M connectivity in all kinds of industries by 2020 worldwide,'' said Anders Runevad, head of region, western & central Europe, Ericsson.