DTAG and FT/Orange announce strategic co-operation on M2M

A very quick pre-MWC blogpost on what could be the most important long term news from the show. What with all the talk of burning platforms and the alliance of the Steves (Ballmer and Elop) there was an announcement on Friday that didn't attract quite as much attention. DTAG and FT/Orange announced a cooperation agreement covering various areas including network sharing (good idea, everyone's going to do it), WiFi, equipment standardisation and lots of things to do with M2M. See the press release linked above for more details.

Orange has upped its game in M2M during the last 12 months and looks to be doing well, while T-Mobile has been going through a bit of a reshuffle in order to focus on the changing opportunities. So it's interesting that they're tying up. A bit of co-operation to build a market is no bad thing. Particularly one as nascent and potentially huge as M2M. Also, Vodafone is starting to take advantage of its regional scale and T-Mobile/Orange kinda need each others' footprints (a bit like Nokia and Microsoft) if they want to head off their threat and that of the likes of Jasper Wireless. It's interesting that the most specific piece of the deal is for M2M cooperation across France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg, i.e. the heart of Europe.

It's only a cooperation arrangement right now so let's not get carried away though.

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