China Telecom has entered three new partnership agreements aimed at accelerating the development of services based on an IoT open platform.
The operator has announced an expanded partnership with HKT to cover the development of a common IoT open platform to serve the operators' customers in the combined geographical footprints of mainland China and Hong Kong.
With the arrangement, each operator's customers will be able to deploy IoT and M2M services on the other's network.
The joint offering will allow seamless switching of IoT subscription between networks by integrating the two commonly-deployed embedded universal integrated circuit card platforms. The multi-domestic service is supported by the Ericsson Device Connection Platform (DCP).
China Telecom also announced a similar strategic partnership with Norway-based Telenor Group. China Telecom's multi-national enterprise customers will gain access to Telenor Connexion's IoT networks in Europe and Asian markets, and will serve as Telenor Connexion’s preferred partner for connectivity in China.
A separate agreement with Orange Business Services will enable both companies to serve their respective enterprise customers through a combined footprint across three continents – Asia, Europe and Africa.
The operators have also agreed to collaborate on the development of new service models supporting global IoT opportunities and to explore the potential of enhancing existing IoT capabilities and applying emerging technologies such as mobile IoT.