GSMA Asia-Pacific IoT group expands

The GSMA announced 14 operators across Asia-Pacific joined its APAC IoT Partnership Programme, which is designed to drive development of the IoT market across the region. In a statement, the GSMA said Celcom Axiata; Dialog Axiata; dtac; M1; Maxis; Ncell; Optus; Robi Axiata; Smart; Smartfren; Singtel; True; XL Axiata; and Xpand joined. It added the programme is currently the largest IoT community in Asia-Pacific, with more than 500 partners comprising mobile operators, manufacturers, developers and others. The programme is designed to foster IoT in Asia-Pacific, which is currently the largest IoT market in the world. GSMA Intelligence predicted the region will account for 11 billion connections and represent a revenue opportunity of $386 billion by 2025. Julian Gorman, head of Asia-Pacific at the GSMA, said IoT is growing “rapidly” across the region, with mobile operators working alongside their partners and the wider ecosystem to drive this expansion. “This programme will support the development of the IoT by creating a cross-regional IoT community to facilitate collaboration and knowledge sharing, as well as creating opportunities that benefit both the supply chain and their customers,” explained Gorman. The GSMA added a major focus of the initiative are IoT labs, which are being set up by operators across the region to encourage the development of new IoT products and services. Initially, the labs, which are a “key requirement” for collaboration and to encourage new IoT use cases, will be available to partners and customers in Australia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Thailand. As part of the programme’s requirements, all participating operators have signed a memorandum of understanding to ensure that the coordination and output among the IoT Labs is consistent with global and regional standards.