Crossing M2M borders

Tracking a vehicle as it crosses a national border or a container as its unloaded in a foreign port may seem like an easy task, but such international visibility is harder to maintain than one might think.

Machine-to-machine (or M2M) communications is dependent upon the cellular network to relay information back to the customer, and the morass of international roaming has presented huge barriers for multinational enterprises and regional M2M operators, said Alex Brisbourne, president and chief operating officer of Kore Telematics, a U.S. M2M service provider. “The industry is faced with the fact that a particular application is limited to a single country,” Brisbourne said.

That’s why Kore is joining forces with other global Telematics company to create a unified network their customers can access around the globe. Called the m2mGlobal Alliance, Kore and three other operators in Europe and Australia will extend not extend each other access to their wholesale agreement with local operators but access to their management and support platforms, expanding each carrier’s coverage area to dozens of new markets.

The Alliance will initially start out with four partners. In addition to Kore, which provides access to CDMA and GSM networks in North America, the other operators are Vianet, serving the U.K. and western Europe, Mach Communications covering Australia and New Zealand, and Wireless Maingate in northern Europe. Brisbourne, however, said that the Alliance will be seeking new members to fill out a global footprint.