T-Mobile and Deutsche Telekom are joining forces to launch a solution designed to improve IoT connectivity. The technology will be available across 188 destinations, on 383 networks worldwide.
Many enterprises have yet to capture the full value of IoT, according to T-Mobile and Deutsche Telekom, who accused other carriers of forcing enterprises to jump through hoops to manage IoT connectivity on a global scale. Enterprises need to cobble together a patchwork of operator agreements—all with different contracts, service level agreements, management interfaces and customer support. To view and manage those devices, they navigate a multitude of platforms from various operators. And for every issue that arises, there are different customer care and support teams.
Additionally, there’s little flexibility in how enterprises pay for IoT, T-Mobile and Deutsche Telekom said. Each carrier has its own payment model, making it difficult for businesses to effectively scale IoT across the globe.
Now is the time to move forward with IoT connectivity, according to T-Mobile and Deutsche Telekom, because 5G IoT connections are projected to make up 57% of all worldwide cellular IoT connections by 2025. Since 5G supports low-latency, massive data use and can connect up to 100 times more devices than 4G, enterprises have a large opportunity to embrace new use cases and actionable data –if the connectivity issue can be solved.
Then, “One provider. One solution. That’s ‘making it simple’ taken at its word,” said Hagen Rickmann, managing director business customers, Telekom Deutschland, in a prepared statement.
Other carriers are focusing on IoT of course. Verizon has launched it’s own IoT platform, ThingSpace, which leverages Verizon’s 5G network and its Verizon Business unit.
