Telefónica is boosting its “Internet of Things” international strategy. The Brazilian unit of the Spanish telecom group said it has partnered with Jasper to expand the reach of its machine-to-machine platform.
Bruno Pavan, manager of M2M business development at Telefónica Vivo, told RCR Wireless News the deal with Jasper led to the creation of its Vivo M2M Control Center Platform, which is focused on international services.
“It will attend global corporate clients that want to build an IoT solution in Brazil in compliance with our regulations,” Pavan said, noting the platform enables businesses in any market to deploy, manage and monetize IoT services.
Pavan believes Brazil has potential to expand IoT applications. One of the barriers, he noted, remains connectivity costs. However, more initiatives might launch in the coming years as the government has reduced taxes for M2M. Pavan expects the reach of M2M to go beyond current uses of vehicle tracking and point-of-sale. The concept of IoT should begin to appear in connected cars to improve logistics processes and monitoring.
Vivo has been pushing its M2M business, especially following its announced machine-to-machine strategy for the local market. Looking at the whole group, Spain and the U.K. are more developed in using M2M, but Pavan said Brazil has gained relevance in the global strategy due to its growth potential.
IoT increase
According to a survey from Tata Consultancy Services, Latin American enterprises are investing an average of $54.7 million on IoT initiatives. Almost half of them track customers through their mobile devices and are using IoT in their production or distribution operations. Companies in the region are less likely to place sensors in products and almost one-quarter are changing their business models to increase product leasing. IoT projects at Latin American firms, on average, increased revenue by 18.3%.
More Latin American news:
Argentina – Claro is set to launch IPTV services, according to a local news outlet that said the launch could be in the fourth quarter.
Region – Millicom posted second-quarter 2015 results. As for Latin America, revenues grew 21.7% year-over-year to $1.464 billion, and increased 1.6% sequentially.
Brazil – Amos Genish, president of Telefónica Vivo, said the carrier is aware of the economic crisis Brazil faces, but continues to believe the telecom market outlook remains very competitive.
Brazil – Oi is expanding its data center capacity to offer cloud computing services.
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