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China Telecom to provide enterprise IoT across Bridge Alliance

Bridge Alliance has signed a deal with China Telecom for the latter to provide IoT and M2M services to enterprise customers across its Asia-Pacific, Middle East, and Africa footprint.
Written by Corinne Reichert, Contributor

China Telecom has announced signing an Internet of Things (IoT) deal with Bridge Alliance to provide machine-to-machine (M2M) services to enterprise customers across the latter's footprint.

Bridge Alliance, an alliance of mobile telecommunications providers, covers 34 countries and regions in APAC, the Middle East, and Africa.

"The agreement leverages Bridge Alliance's technical and commercial capabilities to provide homogenous solutions across its footprint. This enables China Telecom's customers to apply a 'glocalised' approach tapping on the simplicity of one single integration with China Telecom and the full support and service quality of local networks in Bridge Alliance," China Telecom said.

Bridge Alliance operators have deployed common connectivity platforms, China Telecom explained, meaning enterprises across the globe will have the same experience when they deploy IoT and M2M solutions across the footprint.

"China Telecom has a strong portfolio of multinational enterprise customers who are looking to deploy their products and services across the Asia-Pacific, Middle East, and Africa regions," China Telecom Global Business MD Deng Xiao Feng said.

"Likewise, China Telecom is also ready to support any inbound opportunities from the member operators into China with the supporting common platform and the business opportunities across these different regions."

Bridge Alliance CEO Eileen Tan said it will also utilise the partnership to grow within the Chinese market.

Members of Bridge Alliance include Optus in Australia; China Telecom and China Unicom in China; SoftBank in Japan; Singtel in Singapore; SK Telecom in Korea; Airtel in India; CSL Hong Kong; Telkomsel in Indonesia; CTM in Macau; Maxis in Malaysia; Globe in the Philippines; Airtel in Sri Lanka; Taiwan Mobile; AIS in Thailand; Telkomcel in Timor-Leste; MobiFone in Vietnam; Airtel Africa; Viva in Bahrain; Viva in Kuwait; STC in Saudi Arabia; and Türk Telekom in Turkey.

The alliance also has partners in the United States and Europe: The Global M2M Association and FreeMove, which includes Orange, Deutsche Telekom, Telecom Italia, and Telia.

China Telecom launched its enterprise open IoT platform with Ericsson in July to allow enterprises to deploy and manage IoT devices more rapidly.

The China Telecom IoT Open Platform is powered by Ericsson's global Device Connection Platform, which is part of Ericsson's IoT Accelerator launched in 2012. It supports over 2,000 enterprise customers and 25 telecommunications carriers in managing their IoT connections across the globe.

Rival telco China Unicom similarly signed an IoT collaboration deal with Ayla Networks in August that will see the them develop various consumer and enterprise solutions after the telco in June launched its Global IoT Connectivity Cooperation Initiative.

Plans already in the works for Ayla and China Unicom include solutions across smart homes, smart hotels, connected cars, artificial intelligence (AI), and intelligent cold chain technology.

Ayla Networks, which received a funding boost from global networking giant Cisco back in 2014, spruiks its offering as the industry's only end-to-end complete platform for IoT solutions.

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