NEPs are Network Equipment Providers: companies like Alcatel Lucent, Ericsson, Nokia Siemens (News - Alert) Networks and Huawei. They’re the biggies. You would expect these companies to be active in the M2M space, particularly since all-IP, next-gen networks have M2M functionality, e.g. provisioning and managing data SIMs (see “M2M in the Cloud: a Logical Development”).  And they are active, albeit in a low-key way, and in the case of Nokia Siemens, it’s a surprising way.

Take a look at “Renesas closes takeover of Nokia’s wireless modem business”. Conclusion: Nokia is leaving the M2M space. Fair enough, but then consider “Nokia Siemens Creates Hi-Tech Chinese City”.  Conclusion: this NEP is very much in the M2M space and they are providing the M2M platform. Also fair, but wouldn’t it make sense for Nokia to sell their wireless modem business to a company in which they’re a major shareholder?  And if you search on M2M on the Nokia Siemens site there are only 10 entries and nothing on the platform.

Okay, so what about Ericsson? I only know that they are active because somebody sent me this url: http://www.ericsson.com/news?idx=0. There is some content; not much and it’s generic: no hard news about a platform or anything on their M2M strategy.

Let’s try Alcatel Lucent.  Enter M2M in the search engine and similar generic content to that of Ericsson appears, but there are some hard news stories. For example, “Vodafone and Alcatel-Lucent team up to develop smart metering in Germany”, but again there was nothing about platforms. The annual report made this comment: “M2M has a large market potential but has not yet taken off due to market fragmentation and lack of harmonized standards. In the same context, we are participating in discussions on M2M standardization within ETSI (News - Alert)”. I don’t think the M2M community would agree with the “not yet taken off” statement but the remainder is a fair comment. 

And now for Huawei (News - Alert). I know that this NEP is active because I wrote an article for their house magazine about a year ago. At the time, the only product seemed to be a 3G embedded module, said to be the world’ s first industrial strength M2M embedded module designed to endure extreme operating conditions. 

Huawei is a formidable NEP so I went to the site expecting to see some interesting developments.  I entered M2M on the search engine, there were only 20 entries and they were all generic apart from “Huawei Showcases World' s First M2M 3G Embedded Module for Extreme Working Environments.” 

However, I asked around and the well-informed CEO of Adequ sent me a Huawei presentation that was given at a recent ETSI M2M Workshop. There were some interesting slides on hybrid cellular and sensor networks as well as one on a flat, all-IP M2M system architecture. 

After taking a longer look at the content on the Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent sites, which I semi-dismissed as being generic, I now realize that operators need help in realizing the kind of connectivity that next-gen applications such as the smart grid will need and that is where the NEPs come in.  With that said, I expected to find information on platform developments and think they must be going on in the labs.

In last week’s blog, I promised more words on the Network Chasm and my home networking experience.  After the technician messed up the installation I thought that I’d fixed it myself. The Net was working and I could phone so everything seemed to be working, but then I found that people couldn’t contact me.  I gave some serious thought to the voice side of the installation, which involved DECT (News - Alert), the VoIP gateway and the ISDN.  I came to the conclusion that the gateway wasn’t doing anything so I switched it off and surprise, surprise, I could still phone out. 

I contacted the installation company and they promised to send their best technician. He took one look and told me that the combination of DECT and VoIP would never work. Why didn’t the first technician tell me that? A got an honest answer: he wasn’t much good and had been fired. Now I have to pay around $120 for the one year contract on a VoIP service that I can’t use and my alternative carrier has to go back to the incumbent and get the original numbers reinstated.