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Vodacom Business

Machine-to-Machine (M2M) from Vodacom Business opens B2B opportunities with the M2M VQFN-8 SIM

Thursday, 24 February 2011

24 February 2011: The M2M VQFN-8 SIM from Vodacom is a SIM card that is packaged in a standard Very Thin Quad Flat Narrow 8 pin (VQFN-8) semiconductor chip. This SIM is soldered onto the customer's printed circuit board when their product is being manufactured, thus eliminating removal and fraud. It also has a long lifespan operating system which ensures 500 000 read/write cycles to its EEPROM memory (vs 100 000 of 2FF SIM plastic SIM cards) to ensure it will not fail in the field; soldering makes it vibration resistant in highly mobile applications and rough terrain; and has an extended operating temperature range so it can operate in harsh environments. 

This SIM can be used in a variety of applications such as:

  • Monitoring and Control
  • Commercial applications
  • Fleet and Asset Management
  • Security and Surveillance
  • Human Touch / Consumer applications
  • Metering

"M2M lays the foundation of the concepts, services and offering that will be delivered to our local markets by Vodacom Business," says Gabi Strip, Executive Head Enterprise Mobility Solutions at Vodacom Business. "We see M2M as an emerging market that will bring a wide range of solutions to enterprises, especially the public sector."

M2M is the remote wireless data interchange between two or more devices, or a central server, without direct relationship with an end customer, in order to support a specific business process or product. Vodacom Business sees the customer as being an enterprise and not a consumer. M2M is in most cases a business to business (B2B) offering but is starting to appear in B2C consumer electronic applications such as eReaders and in future, connected gaming devices. In the B2B space, M2M can be defined a business process efficiency tool which automates previous human intervention.

The M2M market is growing significantly in both South Africa as well as international markets as it offers enterprises the ability to significantly reduce costs, provide managed services, and improved service delivery and efficiency.

"The VQFN-8 SIM allows our customers to continue to innovate in the M2M market by producing smaller, more secure and robust devices for the variety of industries which they serve," says Strijp.

 



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