03/02/2017 ROCCO starts today the first large scale research with MNOs into Roaming Internet of things.

Take the survey here: https://www.research.net/r/ROCCORIoT17

Background to this research

It was January 2009, it was the GSMA offices in London and I was chairing the Roaming Innovation group (RING) of the GSMA.  We had a new agenda item “Roaming machines”. It was the very first time an MNO brought to the group’s attention the need to investigate Roaming Internet of Things (then known as M2M or Machine2Machine). Apparently there were impacts that roaming things of many kinds could have on an MNOs network and RING should investigate.

As I looked around the room at the 30-40 MNOs present from all parts of the world and from all different kinds of MNO, it was clear that no one really knew how to define M2M and how it would differ from Roaming humans. The impacts however became clear, “things” could be much more unpredictable than human traffic with traffic occurring on a large-scale basis without transparency of which sim profiles were actually machines and which were humans. This had apparently already started to cause MNOs many issues. One thing however was clear from the discussion, while everyone knew that this traffic would grow, no one in the room was considering that this new traffic could actually bring new revenues.

Later that year I started working in Vodafone Group and I saw for myself the dynamics of M2M Roaming first-hand working in VRS with my little team of negotiators to bring M2M Roaming to the group.

Roaming Internet of Things Today

Cut to 2017 and M2M Roaming has since been known as a number of projects “Embedded SIM, Connected living, to name only two, but right now we refer to it as Roaming Internet of Things. The reality is that in one form or other Roaming Internet of Things has been around for over 20 years waiting to be defined and refined and there’s still some work to do in refining it.

ROCCO has been asked a number of times by MNOs to gather data on the Internet of Things Roaming strategy and here is the result, a short 20-question survey for MNOs into their strategy behind Roaming Internet of Things.

UROS the Uni-fi Roaming provider has been an inspiration to us these last months in pointing out that this kind of research is needed. We therefore are also using their network of Roaming Internet of Things connections to extend this confidential survey out to as many MNOs as possible.

We hope the unique insights this research project brings will enlighten all MNOs and help support them in strategic decisions. We believe our questions are really original and we expect the results will be too. The results are due next month with some highlights being shared at MWC in Barcelona this month.

Like always with ROCCO Research, all MNOs who take part will for sure be receiving an exclusive report into the aggregated findings from this research.

Many thanks for your participation.

Jason Bryan C.E.O. of ROCCO