Deutsche Telekom and T-Mobile in the USA have launched T-IoT, an enterprise offering for global IoT connectivity, platform management and support.

With T-IoT, enterprises have one team and one global method to manage all their connections across borders. And it will be available across 188 destinations on 383 networks worldwide.

Despite all the excitement around the IoT’s ability to make the connected world a reality, unlock valuable business insights, improve customer experience, cut operational costs and boost efficiency, many enterprises haven’t fully captured value at scale from the IoT. A major reason is that carriers make enterprises jump through hoops to manage IoT connectivity globally.

To deploy multinational IoT connections, enterprises have to cobble together a patchwork of operator agreements, all with different contracts, service level agreements, management interfaces and customer support. 

And 5G promises to take IoT to the next level, with cellular 5G IoT connections projected to make up 57 per cent of all worldwide cellular IoT connections by 2025. With 5G’s ability to support low latency and massive data use, and connect up to a hundred times more devices than 4G, enterprises have an opportunity to embrace new use cases and actionable data that could make the longstanding vision of 5G IoT a reality.

But the gap between the promise of 5G IoT and reality will be wide if managing all that connectivity and data remains unnecessarily complex.

Imagine millions of tracked assets moving across the globe. To stay connected to those assets, enterprises have to negotiate numerous contracts with multiple network operators in different countries and regions, each with its own contract and service level agreements. Then, to view and manage those devices, they navigate a multitude of platforms from various operators. And for every issue that arises, there are different customer care and support teams.

There is also little flexibility in how enterprises pay for the IoT. Each carrier has its own payment model, which makes it hard for businesses to scale IoT across the globe. And with 5G, scaling will be more important to deliver use cases, analytics, data insight and return on investment.

Deutsche Telekom and T-Mobile believe their T-IoT offering could be the answer. It aims to deliver worldwide network connectivity spanning the full range of technologies to support nearly every possible IoT scenario today and tomorrow, including NB-IoT, LTE-M, LTE and 5G.

“The un-carrier rewrote the rules of wireless,” said Mike Katz, president of the T-Mobile business group. “Now, as America’s 5G leader, with the fastest, largest and most reliable 5G network, we’re writing the rules of the 5G era, and we’re doing it in favour of customers and businesses. With T-IoT and our award-winning networks, we’re poised to help businesses realise the true potential of IoT by completely disrupting the status quo of how IoT is purchased and managed.”

The goal is to provide a single pane of glass to view and eventually manage global IoT connections across several platforms, including T-Mobile’s control centre and Deutsche Telekom’s M2M service portal.

The procurement process has been simplified to include streamlined contract and billing, consistent global service level agreements, and customer support.

Flexible pricing sees a pay-per-data model or a choice of three flat-rate unlimited connectivity packages – Unlimited Base, Unlimited Premium and Unlimited Pro – across the USA and Europe, as well as value-added services for connectivity needs for the lifetime of the device.

“Many industries, such as healthcare or automotive, depend on international supply chains,” said Hagen Rickmann, managing director for business customers at Telekom Deutschland. “And their customers today rely on receiving service and assistance anywhere in the world. We’re able to do that with this transatlantic collaboration, with our networks, for the best customer experience, worldwide.”

Ola Källenius, chairman of the Mercedes Benz Group, added: “With millions of connected Mercedes-Benz vehicles in nearly every corner of the world today, and up to 20 million connected cars in our fleet by 2025, we need to be able to rely on telecommunications partners like T-IoT, that offer us global network coverage and an ecosystem for IoT leadership. Real-time, high-bandwidth data transmission is key to digital innovation. 5G technology in IoT scenarios will allow our vehicles to communicate with the speed and reliability needed to offer our customers greater efficiency through improved routing and improved safety.”

Biotronik, a medical device company based in Berlin, also relies on seamless connectivity. With home monitoring technology, many of its medical devices are networked, which helps to increase the quality of lives of millions each year.

“We combine digital medical and state-of-the-art communication technology,” said Volker Lang, Biotronik senior vice president. “With home monitoring, the patient’s vital data are digitally available to the medical team and are constantly analysed. If threshold values are exceeded, the medical team can react immediately. This only works with an absolutely reliable network that transmits the data reliably at all times. We are active in over 100 countries. The T-IoT infrastructure is indispensable for us.”

Patients can travel without worry. Biotronik cooperates with around 5000 hospitals worldwide, which provide care in the event of an emergency at all times.