If you’re looking to transport data or make a wireless connection, you might be wondering what you need. To begin with, you have to choose between mobile broadband and m2m. The two are similar in many ways (and the terms are often used interchangeably), but there is one major difference: a modem in your smartphone can connect to multiple devices at the same time, while an m2m connection is limited to one device at a time. But that doesn’t mean m2m connectivity is less useful. (In some cases, it’s more useful!) Just keep this in mind when making your decision.

Now, let us find out how M2M connectivity can benefit your business.

M2M or machine to machine refers to any system that allows machines, as opposed to people, to exchange data and share resources. M2M is a form of network-based automation that allows all kinds of devices to communicate with each other and with the services they need to operate.

Benefits of M2M Technology

Cost of ownership: Reduced costs for infrastructure as well as labor and maintenance.

Productivity increase: Increased productivity through increased efficiency and easy management.

Attractive business model: M2M solutions can generate new revenue streams by enabling ancillary services such as monitoring, billing and advertising.

New business opportunities: The growth in mobile Internet access opens up new business opportunities across multiple industries.

New revenue streams: By enabling the creation of new value-added services in existing markets, M2M creates new revenue opportunities for existing businesses.

Improved customer experience: Improved customer experience through personalization, convenience and efficiency.

Improved operational efficiency: Increased efficiency through real time management information and lower operating cost.

M2M communications networks can deliver real-time information and services between a range of devices including vehicles, buildings, industrial equipment and smartphones. This enables smart cities to become smarter and more efficient. This also means that the time for some tasks to complete can be reduced significantly – such as a traffic management system being able to alert drivers to congestion before they enter a busy area.

Remote monitoring using sensors will become increasingly important and M2M could play an integral part in many areas including healthcare, agriculture, logistics and home automation. Sensors on remote equipment such as machines and oil pipelines can send alerts back to engineers if they sense something amiss or potential problems – this could be having a positive impact on the environment too by reducing the number of vehicle journeys required to monitor such things.

When analyzing the benefits of M2M, it should be noted that the process is inherently complicated. The chances of failure increase as more challenges are encountered. Each one of these challenges must have a solution to be overcome. This suggests that future M2M developments may not be as successful as they otherwise might have been had they occurred in a less complex environment. However, there is no reason why this cannot eventually occur. 

As a result, many will see but few will profit from the M2M movement initially due to the costs associated with implementing these systems. Nevertheless, the benefits for those who manage to implement it successfully should outweigh the cost and challenges along the way.