Jasper Wireless targets untapped M2M market

With a saturated market for consumer mobile technology, mobile communications between machines could offer the best hope for operators wanting to increase their revenues, according to a machine-to-machine operator launching in Europe.

"There are 1.1 billion machines that can, and should, be connected in Europe and the US, but less than two percent are connected today," said Macario Namie, senior director of product marketing at the machine-to-machine (M2M) operator Jasper Wireless.

Jasper's network is designed for point-of-sale devices, vehicles, burglar alarms and equipment such as photocopiers, all of which can have a $30-$60 (£15-£30) cellular modem built in. Data usage is low — typically around 250KB per month — so contracts are likely to involve a small monthly fee, said Namie.

"M2M, basic telemetry and telematics applications are traditionally thought of as being very low data-rate applications, using bandwidth only intermittently," said ABI Research's senior analyst Sam Lucero. Nevertheless, Lucero predicts that revenues will increase as applications become more complex, and so send more data.

"It has to be micro money, but it's a volume market," said wireless analyst Richard Webb of Infonetics Research, referring to the low revenues which are likely to be gained from each installation.

Many operators are setting up M2M operations. Namie claims that Jasper can offer a better service than its competitors as a result of in-house software development, and the fact that it can offer coverage to 35 countries.

Jasper leases base-station capacity and, as a member of the GSM Association, it can offer roaming agreements to other countries, which will be useful for vehicle M2M applications.

Jasper is working with Wavecom to provide a "black box" M2M cellular modem, which will have a software-based embedded SIM. For OEMs or providers supporting hundreds of devices, it offers a central control centre with one dashboard for all the machines.

Meanwhile, traditional mobile-network operators are getting in on the act, according to Lucero, combining application development with bundled packages. "For example, a Sprint Nextel or a Rogers may have an M2M vending-machine monitoring application, to which they will add the fleet-management telematics for the trucks that service those machines, and the cell-phone connectivity for the workers in those trucks."