Vodafone Business, the enterprise unit of UK telecommunications group Vodafone, has signed an Internet of Things (IoT) partnership with Latin American telecom carrier America Movil, the former said in a release.
Under the terms of the global IoT agreement, IoT customers of both companies will be able to deploy international IoT solutions by combining their respective IoT platforms and their expertise in IoT connectivity and services.
Vodafone Business customers will be able to connect IoT devices across Latin America; and América Móvil IoT clients will have access to Vodafone’s global network.
“We are proud to be partnering with América Móvil,” said Vinod Kumar, CEO, Vodafone Business. “With this agreement we further extend our IoT global footprint by partnering with one of Latin America’s strongest players. América Móvil´s coverage and expertise across Latin America will help us support our global customers in a part of the world where we have seen a surge in IoT adoption.”
“In América Móvil we believe in win-win partnerships that benefit our customers. We are excited about the partnership with Vodafone Business that provides our joint customers with the best user experience of two leading technology providers,” said Marco Quatorze, América Móvil Value Added Service’s Director.
According to the Vodafone Business IoT Barometer the number of companies using IoT globally has grown to over 34% and 95% of adopters worldwide have seen measurable benefits from their IoT projects. A recent IDC study forecasts that the Latin America region will see the fastest IoT spending growth.
Vodafone’s IoT platform currently connects over 88.9 million devices worldwide. Vodafone Group has mobile operations in 24 countries, partners with mobile networks in 42 more, and fixed broadband operations in 19 markets. As of 30 June 2019, Vodafone Group had approximately 640 million mobile customers.
Headquartered in Mexico, América Móvil is a provider of integrated telecommunications services in Latin America. The company has operations in 25 countries across the Americas and Europe. As of the end of last month, America Movil had 363 million access lines, including 278.7 million wireless subscribers and 84.3 million fixed revenue generating units.
Last week, Vodafone Business and AT&T have agreed on a roaming relationship that they say creates the largest NB-IoT footprint in the world for global devices, allowing devices to roam between AT&T’s nationwide NB-IoT footprint in the U.S. and Vodafone’s networks in Germany, Spain, the U.K., Italy and the Netherlands.
The two carriers had previously put together a roaming arrangement for their LTE-M networks in the U.S. and the Netherlands. They said in a joint release that both operators are “committed to expanding their NB-IoT and LTE-M roaming footprints globally to put LPWA on a similar global footprint to 4G” and noted that the two IoT standards are expected to be included in 3GPP’s standards for massive IoT in 5G.
