Seven telecoms standards bodies are joining forces to create a common platform for machine-to-machine communications, as these start to gain global mass on the path to the ‘internet of things’. The groups originally came together in January but they have now published a roadmap and adopted a name, ‘oneM2M’. This initiative aims to establish a common framework that could underpin services in many vertical markets from smart grid to connected vehicles.
A new report from Maravedis-Rethink found that lack of standard architectures was seen as the biggest obstacle to mass market adoption of M2M applications across many industries. Author Bill Lesieur, who conducted a survey across the whole M2M ecosystem, discovered that ‘the top challenge to M2M adoption on a broad, cross-industry scale is seen to be the lack of standards and common architectures, which in turn prevents solutions scaling up’ (http://www.maravedis-bwa.com/en/reports#report-230).
Such concerns have sparked the formation of oneM2M which is targeting communications services providers, enabling them to use a common set of technologies to deliver applications to many types of users – including smart grid, connected cars, e-health, enterprise supply chain, home automation and energy management, and public safety, according to the statement.
The first step will be to ‘confront the critical need for a common M2M Service Layer, which can be readily embedded within various hardware and software, and relied upon to connect the myriad of devices in the field with M2M application servers worldwide,’ said the organization.
The contributing standards bodies are the Association of Radio Industries and Businesses (ARIB) and the Telecommunication Technology Committee (TTC) of Japan; the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) and the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) of the US; the China Communications Standards Association (CCSA); the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI); and the Telecommunications Technology Association (TTA) of Korea.