The UK telecoms regulator Ofcom has announced an industry pilot of the long-range broadband and M2M technology later this year, in order to make sure everything works properly ahead of a likely national deployment next year. Read more »
The Weightless SIG claims the new standard will allow for ultra-low-power transmissions at long-range and at a cheap manufacturing cost. If true, that would make the technology ideal for M2M communications. Read more »
The two companies have signed a partnership aimed at providing municipalities with tools for making their cities, in particular their transport systems, smarter and more efficient. Read more »
M2M outfit Jasper is investing in Tekelec’s policy server technology, which means it will be able to prioritize the traffic of certain machines over others. Why? Not all “things” in the internet of things are created equal. Read more »
Sierra is exiting the mobile hotspot and dongle business so it can concentrate on the growing machine-to-machine market and embedded connectivity. Read more »
Touring Verizon’s booth wasn’t quite what I expected, but that’s not a bad thing. Instead of focusing on new consumer devices, the company is using the venue to show off partner products from its Innovations Center, illustrating the benefits of connectivity where you’d least expect. Read more »
Chicago app developer MiGym is giving health clubs an app store presence, but it has bigger plans. It hopes to make the gym a critical element in the quantified self, tracking members’ workout data and sharing that information with fitness and health platforms. Read more »
Opportunities for big data and data-analytics firms in health care are likely to expand dramatically in the coming years. Driving this are trends such as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the use of data to address inefficient processes, and the rapid growth of mobile health. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Looking to get a connected car without buying a new vehicle? A small module with GPS and cellular radio that plugs into your vehicle’s diagnostic port may be the answer. Moj.io is just that and includes 8 useful apps to add smarts to your car. Read more »
Sprint’s approach to the connected car is certainly odd for a carrier. Instead of focusing on connectivity, Sprint wants to become an automotive infotainment and telematics systems integrator. To accomplish this it’s soliciting a lot of help, starting with Airbiquity, Aeris and WirelessCar. Read more »
M2M is huge, and power everything from point-of-sale machines and ER devices to much of the Big Data revolution. But all that is in danger, says John Horn of RACO Wireless, if we don’t patch two major holes. Read more »
ARM, Neul and CSR have joined hands with Cable & Wireless Worldwide to push adoption of the Weightless wireless standard. Meanwhile, ARM and Neul are also backing an internet-of-things accelerator program, with the help of Unilever and Raspberry Pi. Read more »
Kore Telematics, which provides cellular connectivity for business who want to span different countries and carriers, is seeing its business grow along with the number of machine to machine connections — especially in the medical device and mobile payments sector. The internet of things is coming. Read more »
As the volume of connected devices increases, so too will the probability of hackers targeting these systems to exploit networks, steal data, hijack systems, and compromise workflows. Security specialists recognize the potential risks and are already developing technologies and methodologies for hardening M2M systems from attack. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Family member locator apps will grow into a big business as tracking services gravitate from specialized devices to the smartphone, according to Berg Insight. Sixteen million people use a GPS or cellular tracking service today, but smartphones will drive that number to 70 million in 2016. Read more »
T-Mobile USA is shutting down 75 percent of its GSM capacity in order to clear its airwaves for mobile broadband. You would think that such a large-scale retirement of 2G would wreck havoc on its M2M communications business. But the opposite appears to be case. Read more »
Verizon recently has aggressively pursued its LTE-connected-car strategy, buying up Hughes Telematics and on Wednesday launching a new initiative with foreign car manufacturers. But not all automakers are necessarily on board with Verizon’s dream of embedding 4G into every car. Read more »
Trying to give the still nascent mHealth sector a motivational kick in the pants, the Federal Communications Commission has begun working directly with startups and universities to help bring new wireless telemedicine and healthcare technologies to market faster. Read more »
Verizon’s ambition to connect more than homes and phones just zeroed in on the automotive market. It announced on Friday it is buying Hughes Telematics for $612 million in cash, gaining the company’s crop of machine-to-machine (M2M) connected car technologies and services. Read more »
Soon, a stay in intensive care will no longer mean being physically tethered to every monitoring device imaginable. The FCC has designated a slice of radio airwaves for medical body area networks, which will allow hospitals to cut the cord on bulky vital-signs monitoring gear. Read more »
T-Mobile is still struggling after its planned acquisition by AT&T fell through. In the first full quarter after the proposed merger was scuttled, the nation’s fourth largest carrier managed to gain only 187,000 customers; most from lower revenue businesses, such as prepaid and M2M. Read more »
This quarter saw Amazon Web Services finally relaxing its public-cloud-only stance and launching services to support hybrid-cloud deployments. Meanwhile, Hadoop players moved to make their platforms more accessible to mainstream BI analysts and database administrators. A new quarterly report analyzes these trends and provides a near-term outlook. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Five key technology sectors are enabling the smart city: smart grids, smart transport, smart water and waste management, smart building systems, and the enabling ICT platforms for the smart city. Key players like IT companies, telcos and utilities must learn how to harness those technologies, and quickly. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Big data now touches everything from enterprises to smart-meter startups, while Hadoop is fast becoming the leading tool to analyze that data, and debates around privacy abound. GigaOM Pro analysts offer insights on what to consider when it comes to big data decisions for your business. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The industry has moved beyond starry-eyed soothsaying about a world of 50 billion connected devices to start talking about how these mammoth networks of objects and appliances would actually work and how they would be managed. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
If we build a world where 50 billion devices are connected, those devices will generate a lot of chatter, and that chatter could get very annoying. By telling us everything about our homes, cars and appliances the Internet of things may wind up telling nothing at all. Read more »
Want to know what’s going to happen at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week? Why not ask the organizers? I got on the phone with the GSMA, and here’s what they told me to expect: connectivity in everything, NFC and, of course, LTE. Read more »
The fourth quarter may have lacked a dominating big-event product announcement like Q3’s Facebook platform extension or Q2’s unveiling of Google+, but the NewNet world continued to buzz along. In the battle for mind share, everyone wanted to be a platform. Meanwhile, consumer and social technologies continued to gain momentum, and new vehicles for content and service discovery presented both challenges and opportunities for NewNet companies. And it is hard to ignore the overcrowded but growing world of daily deals. This quarterly report analyzes these trends and others, and it also provides a near-term outlook of trends, technologies and companies to watch in 2012. Companies mentioned in the report include Amazon, Facebook and Socialcast. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Verizon is putting LTE chips in TouchTunes’ new digital karaoke machines, but that’s not all. At CES, Verizon seemed determined to embed its latest wireless network technology into anything that could conceivably need an Internet connection, including ATM machines, robots and photo booths. Read more »
Qualcomm and Verizon are both proposing to trick out healthcare with some wireless connectivity. Qualcomm launched its new 2net cloud and mobile biometric information monitoring and sharing platform, while Verizon is developing mobile video communications technologies that could enable the virtual house call. Read more »
AT&T is launching yet another new business division, this one called Digital Life Services. The operator hasn’t revealed many details about the new unit, but from the sound of it, this may be AT&T’s attempt to tackle the smart grid, targeting consumers and businesses directly. Read more »
Connectivity changes everything. That’s the credo driving just about every corner of our day-to-day lives. As human beings, we are now connected to one another through not just our social networks but also our cars, the books we read, the albums we download and even our own health and wellness habits (to name just a few areas). With that in mind, GigaOM Pro has singled out certain areas in the technology industry where we see this shift to constant connectivity taking place most drastically. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
There are more than 5 billion mobile subscribers in the world, and new growth is coming from Asia and Latin America, according to data out on Thursday from Wireless Intelligence, which ranked the top 20 mobile operators by subscribers. U.S. carriers are way down the list. Read more »
The number of total wireless connected devices is expected to more than double from 9 billion today to more than 24 billion in 2020, according to the GSMA. That growth will be paced by connected devices which are expected to double to 12 billion by 2020. Read more »
Tablets and e-readers and connected electric meters … oh my! As device makers embed broadband into more gadgets, and consumer demand for ubiquitous broadband skyrockets, operators are realizing they aren’t in Kansas anymore and traditional financial metrics and ways of running their businesses won’t cut it. Read more »
Macheen, a company that wants to build a broadband cloud that can provide device makers and retailers with connectivity, has signed a deal with Sprint to deliver 3G service in the U.S. It is now working with Dell in the U.S. and Germany. Read more »
The undercover smart grid player Digi International is about to get a lot less undercover. On Wednesday, telco giant AT&T said it has partnered with Digi to offer home and building energy applications for the 13 million smart meters that connect to AT&T’s wireless network. Read more »
The nation’s top two carriers managed to add 3.4 million new subscribers in the second quarter of 2011 in an almost-saturated mobile market. For that, they should thank your car, your iPad and whatever other connected device you might have floating around. Read more »
Do we only want dumb screens: the ability to get whatever content and services you want over the web instead of locked to a device? Today, the answer is we want it both ways, but in the future, dumb terminals with one exception: the smartphone. Read more »
At the IEEE Technology Time Machine Symposium last week I heard the world’s leading academics, engineers, executives, and government officials project what the world will look like in 2020. The future brings technology together for everything from enhancing the human experience to improving environmental sustainability. Read more »
