Wireless data applications for business/enterprise market segment growing

Canada’s wireless operators are making a stronger push to develop, sell and support wireless data applications for the business segment, as witnessed by several announcements in the past couple of weeks. Microcell Telecommunications Inc. and Rogers Wireless Inc. unveiled details of agreements relating to fleet management and telematics offerings. While these types of applications aren’t new, they have become significant revenue drivers for wireless operators looking to make a solid business case for wireless data. Microcell, the struggling Montreal-based operator, announced that it had signed an agreement with U.S.-based Trimble for the delivery of fleet and mobile resource management services throughout North America. Trimble will be able to deliver GPS-based applications with integrated wireless network capabilities to its customers in Canada and the United States. This isn’t the first agreement for Microcell for the use of its network for telematics-related services. The company has several wholesale customers that use its network for these kinds of purposes. Ten days ago, Rogers Wireless hosted its first developers conference and used it as the venue to bolster its presence in the business wireless data market, unveiling deals relating to telematics and fleet management applications. Rogers announced an agreement with WebTech Wireless for fleet management applications. It also unveiled a deal with Ingenico for a wireless point-of-sale product. ABM market shows potential Telus Mobility is also eyeing the potentially lucrative machine-to-machine wireless communications market and is preparing to unveil details of an agreement with an independent automated bank machine (ABM) provider. While details of the agreement are still under wraps, the company says that the ABM supplier will use its Mike network for connectivity as opposed to installing landlines for each machine. "We’re very, very bullish about that whole market. We think there’s a lot of value there and again it comes back to we can save these guys some costs, but more importantly we can create a whole bunch of opportunities for them to drive more transactions," Bob Petrovic, Telus Mobility’s manager of mobile computing for the business/enterprise division, tells Report on Wireless. Petrovic says that other areas will see wireless connectivity in the future, and notes that pop vending machine management is a potentially lucrative revenue stream given the sheer number of units in the country. He estimates that this area of wireless communications will take on such a priority that the majority of his work at this point next year will be dominated by machine-to-machine communications systems. "The reality is if you show someone at Pepsi that coming back to the warehouse with a truck half full of merchandise is a bad thing – you just paid for the gas, you paid the guy to load it, you paid for the guy to unload it, you paid for all the breakage, etc. Those applications are very easy to solve based on ROI (return on investment)," Petrovic explains. While fleet management and telematics offerings are proven revenue drivers for wireless operators, Petrovic says that other machine-to-machine systems can be equally lucrative. As is the case with pop vending machines, Petrovic suggests wirelessly enabling automated metre reader (AMR) systems is another example of a potentially lucrative offering simply due to the fact that every house has utility metres. While the system may seem novel, it isn’t. Microcell began working on a wireless AMR system more than three years ago with Telemetrix Inc. (RoW, July 19/99). Under terms of the agreement, the two companies were to have co-built a GSM network in Manitoba to test the PCS telemetry service on a large scale.

Wireless data applications for business/enterprise market segment growing

News | November 25, 2002

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