Vodafone has become the first global Internet of Things (IoT) mobile provider to exceed 50 million connections. The telecommunications company is demonstrating industry-leading growth of around one million new connections a month, with particularly strong performance in the automotive, healthcare and utilities sectors.
Vodafone’s IoT solutions integrate its own networks and other partner networks to provide customers with globally unified connectivity services spanning nearly every country on earth.
IoT technologies are now beginning to reach critical mass in the enterprise and are also a core focus of research and development for a wide range of consumer technology companies.
In India, Vodafone’s range of IoT solutions include Vodafone location tracker, automotive telematics, remote asset management, managed IoT connectivity platform, wireless payment solutions, security & surveillance solutions, smart metering solutions and special SIMS designed for operating in harsh conditions.
Vodafone is now acknowledged to be the market leader in mobile IoT worldwide, recognised by Gartner as a ‘Leader’ in its Magic Quadrant for managed M2M services, worldwide 2016, for the third consecutive year and as ‘the consistent global leader’ in IoT services by Machina Research in its 2016 IoT Communications Service Provider Benchmarking report.
This is the fifth consecutive year that Vodafone has been the leader in this report. Nick Gliddon, director – Vodafone Business Services, said, “Crossing the 50 million mark and being a global leader in IoT solutions is a testimony to Vodafone’s commitment and continued focus on innovation in the rapidly growing and dynamic IoT sector. We thank our customers for supporting us and helping us achieve this significant milestone.”
The most recent Vodafone IoT barometer report found that around 24percent of businesses’ IT budgets are being allocated to IoT; 76 percent of businesses say that IoT will be ‘critical’ for the future success of any organisation in their sector; 48 percent of IoT adopters say they’re using IoT to support large-scale business transformation; 86 percent of businesses in the industrial sector — including companies in mining, construction and waste management — say they have seen “significant” return from implementing IoT.
Talking about Vodafone managed IoT connectivity, Ritesh Sutaria, CTO & co-founder, Prompt Softech says “We’re working on the world’s largest IT integration project, and I expect the Vodafone managed IoT connectivity service to comprise at least 60 per cent of this project. We have 1,000 villages already connected, and we’ll reach 18,000 within three years. Vodafone gives us the ability to scale quickly.”