Almost everyone has a cell phone (or two) in developed markets, but operators are still registering multiple subscribers--6 million in five districts, in the case of AT&T. These new customers are the machines around us, connected to the Internet to report on their health--or our--. As new machines connected, showed off their skills at the Mobile World Congress this week, industry figures, has raised an important question: what others say about our gadget on us?
M2M usually refers to a system where a wireless device that sends data to a backend system, where you can be collected and displayed. A common example is a metre of water in a House that regularly and automatically sends the data back to the water company for billing purposes and monitoring.
At Mobile World Congress, at&T announced that it has collaborated with many companies offering new features and services for the millions of customers who use the network for M2M services. Partnerships include one with Axeda, offering a platform for developing applications for industrial organisations, medical, it, banking, retail and Government.
Other partners include AT&T application platform provider ILS technology; SensorLogic, which offers a tracking service and monitoring fleet, and Sierra Wireless offers a hosting service for collecting and managing data from connected devices.
The Conference, AT&T is showing off some ideas M2M embedded Mobile House on display including pill wirelessly with bottles, a home security system, wireless eReaders, frames, tablets and console.
AT&T also said the imprint of its M2M service to include roaming in over 200 countries in the second half of 2011 is growing.
Sierra Wireless showed off a few commercial M2M projects that it supports. One is a system that collects data from the touch screen monitor that NEC has marks and Spencer and other stores in the United Kingdom. Collects information about which elements on screen touch most commonly the buyers. That data determine which advertisements are displayed on a larger monitor.
The system uses wireless data, since many stores don't permit third parties to use their wired Internet connections for security issues, said Matt Allpress, sales engineer for Sierra Wireless M2M in Europe.
Sierra Wireless also demonstrated by a system that collects data from automobile charging stations of Paris. For now, wireless connectivity enables Schneider Electric, which makes the charging stations, the health of charging stations for remote monitoring. You can control remotely the electricity consumption of each station and if the station needs maintenance.
In addition, the system may be used to help the driver find stations online map and reserve one, said Dorine Ruant, marketing and partnership manager for Sierra AirVantage Business Unit.
Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs used his time during a keynote Roundtable to talk about his company's vision for connected devices, which includes more than just M2M. "What we believe is that everything is going to be connected. We will have an Internet of things. Around us in the environment there is going to be hundreds or thousands of things that are in the network and can be addressed, "he said.
At home, for example, all kinds of electronics, including digital photo frames, stereo speakers, screens, boards and gaming devices will be connected wirelessly, said, some of which will send data without human intervention. Referenced a statistic released earlier this year the Consumer Electronics Association estimates that by 2014, 70 percent of consumer devices will be connected to the Internet.
Because these devices can use various wireless technologies, he imagines that the phone will be a central point for gathering data from devices, and for the control of some of them. "A vision for the industry going forward is that the phone will sit at the center of the Web of things around you and orchestrate the interactions with things," he said.
He pointed out some problems with M2M. For example, if people wear sensors that monitor their health, they may want to share only the data that sensors collect with doctors trust. However, if someone is in an accident, that the person would probably want to allow a paramedic--one who probably have never edited the first person--to access data. These are the privacy issues that the industry will need to resolve, he said.
Nancy Gohring covers phones and cloud computing to the IDG News Service. Follow Nancy on Twitter at @ idgnancy. E-mail address is Nancy_Gohring@idg.com, Nancy
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