M2M Wireless, a provider of specialized wireless communication services for the machine-to-machine or “M2M” and telematics marketplace, and Ctek, a provider of industrial data communications and remote management equipment, reportedly announced a new program called “Monitor, Alert and Protect” or “M.A.P.” that eliminates the possibility of unexpected data plan overage charges.

 

Through the M.A.P. program, M2M Wireless offers no overage guaranteed plans starting at 50 KB and up to 1 GB with static or dynamic IP addressing, the company announced.

According to M2M Wireless officials, data plan overruns occur for a variety of reasons including legitimate but unanticipated demand, faulty endpoint equipment, unauthorized usage, and malicious attacks.

 

M2M application utilizing data plans ranging from a few hundred kilobytes to a small number of megabytes will suffer more with this issue, officials said.

 

This is because when operating within contractual limits, these specialized data plans provide remote communications at a fraction of the cost of any other approach. However, these low cost plans often come with correspondingly high rates for data usage in excess of the plan.

 

Ctek SkyRouters enrolled in M2M's M.A.P. program monitor customer specific data plan usage, issue alerts when the plan is in jeopardy, and take preconfigured steps to protect the customer against overruns, said company officials.

 

Devices in protection mode can be reset to normal service via SMS commands or on-site intervention once the problem has been cleared. All events, commands, and responses significant to the M.A.P. program are logged in a nonvolatile file system on the SkyRouter.

 

 “Both Ctek and M2M Wireless had customers screaming for this level of service,” William Buchan, Ctek's president, said. “ Neither of us could provide it by ourselves but together we had the capabilities to make it happen. The proprietary attributes that are the technological backbone of the M2M Wireless M.A.P. program are extensions of existing features long deployed in our popular TCOPlus administrative package.”

 

According to Sean Quine, president of M2M Wireless, Ctek's IPtables based firewall in conjunction with the proprietary M.A.P controls now allow M2M Wireless to guarantee their customers protection from the risk of data plan overages. 

“The powerful combination of Ctek's solution and M2M's economical data plans will open the door for many cost sensitive applications,” Quine said.