Telefonica M2M Seminar

[jimcarter]

I went to a seminar at O2 the other week. There were some interesting stats which I thought the members may like. My notes from the meeting are:-

 

 

O2 have Invested £500 million in the mobile network in 2012

There are 7 million M2M devices Globally (Emerging market)

Telefonica have 310 Million Customers Globally

O2 have 23 Million Customers in the UK (biggest provider of M2M).

The use of mobile data has doubled in the past 12 months

 

Global M2M

 

The are 250,000,000 iPhones in circulation globally

There are 1.1/1.5 billion "Nokia" type phones in circulation which will migrate to 2/3G and beyond.

There are 3.7 billion live mobile phone connections globally

Upto 2020 there are expected to be 12/20 billion M2M devices connected, there are currently approx 150 million, figures are a combination of fixed and mobile technologies.

About a billion of the above figures will be mobile M2M.

 

Project Beacon is the convergence of the O2 and Vodafone infrastructure to extend the reach of the mobile network.

 

Combined there are currently approx 18,000 serving cells, the aim is to extend this so that O2 and Vodafone have 22,000 each.

 

The Long Term Evolution (LTE) network, (effectively 4G) infrastructure should be in place by 2015. There will be no voice on the LTE network. The network will incorporate 2 & 3G services and it is highly unlikely that there will be any loss of 2G services until after 2020 or beyond (there are so many users on the technology is simply cannot be turned off!).

 

O2 and Voda will be sharing the ownership of the cells, location and physical equipment however the core network and therefore service delivery will not be shared. This maintains the differentiation in services of the two companies.

 

N.b. - LTE – The Spectrum Auction is being held in January, services available from the chosen supplier by May.

O2's tests so far (note on the non-contended network) have demonstrated downstream speeds of 45MB/sec and Upstream between 10 & 20MB/sec. In operation on a contended network this should be in the region of 5 to 20MB/sec for both upstream & downstream.

[matthew.brough]

Very interesting. Since the merger with EE I wondered if any of the others would follow. In effect we have got used to roaming M2M sims with 4 choices and in effect that will only be 2, albeit with a better reach.

Any ideas what the new combined networks will be or are they keeping their own identity unlike EE?

 

On a side note I was very impressed with your high gain antennas! The SPT could see a network called Bouygues Telecom which is a French network. The site is in East Sussex so either they are mighty fine antennas or someone had a peco-cell/femto-cell nearby!

[james.wilson]

if voda and o2 are merging data then do we need roaming sims?

[matthew.brough]

if voda and o2 are merging data then do we need roaming sims?

I suppose it depends on the back haul. I am presuming that when we had 4 networks we had 4 sets of cells, 4 back-haul networks so quite a fair amount of redundancy. If there are in effect only 2 networks EE or the new combined then we only have 2. Apparently they have both set up a company called CTI that they will both own who look after the network similar to how BT have openreach but apart from that they will be separate.

 

I wonder if we will see this type of consolidation in our industry with ARC's. I believe one of the main reason alarm companies don't have their own ARC's is cost. Why couldn't a group of installers who want their own ARC club together and form a company for monitoring and own a share each? I'm presuming the main reason the mobile networks have gone down this route is due to the huge costs of maintaining their network.

[james.wilson]

<blockquote class='ipsBlockquote'data-author="matthew.brough" data-cid="296482" data-time="1355505842"><p>

I suppose it depends on the back haul. I am presuming that when we had 4 networks we had 4 sets of cells, 4 back-haul networks so quite a fair amount of redundancy. If there are in effect only 2 networks EE or the new combined then we only have 2. Apparently they have both set up a company called CTI that they will both own who look after the network similar to how BT have openreach but apart from that they will be separate.<br />

<br />

I wonder if we will see this type of consolidation in our industry with ARC's. I believe one of the main reason alarm companies don't have their own ARC's is cost. Why couldn't a group of installers who want their own ARC club together and form a company for monitoring and own a share each? I'm presuming the main reason the mobile networks have gone down this route is due to the huge costs of maintaining their network.</p></blockquote>

I looked at this some years ago. At tthe time I recall an arc needed 7000 connection to break even. But since then monitoring costs have come down and as such so has arc income while costs have increased. However running a non compliant arc is more feasable

[jimcarter]

Roaming will continue, because roaming is a function of international SIM cards. So overseas providers will have a preferred network list they will operate from.

 

What you may have missed is that Project Beacon is the consolidation of the cell infrastructure and NOT the backbone services unique to each provider. So whilst both providers "share" the cell infrastructure, that is buildings, equipment in the location, they will not share the same backbone network.

 

I think it is also interesting that 2G services have a long life expectancy right through 2020.

 

What I find staggering is the amount of older style handsets (1.1 to 1.5 Billion) that will convert to M2M in time. Just shows how the communications technologies rapidly expand and improve. And the number of iphones in circulation.

[matthew.brough]

Thats good to know. Do you know if EE is doing the same or as they are now the same company utilizing the orange an T-Mobile separatly? So with regards 02/Voda in effect the cell infrastructure is the only common item and everything else is business as usual.

 

Dito suprised 2G has had and will continue to have such a long life.

[jimcarter]

No idea about EE I'm afraid, and it looks like they are not involved in Beacon. 

 

Yes, correct that the only common part is the cell infrastructure, the services remain individual to the companies.

 

2G has a long life as there are so many applications that use it, so a fast phase out is just not practical. It will be here as long as there is a spectrum available to support it (from what I gather from the seminar).

[Oxo]

This was sent to me a few days ago.

 

http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/24180/m2m-presents-new-security-risks-that-require-new-security-solutions

[james.wilson]

its from feb?