Sprint business customers will now be able to more easily take their operations global, reduce complexity by working with a single point of contact to provide a unified, end-to-end offering for all domestic and international connectivity needs.
Sprint and Orange Business Services have announced they are partnering to provide Sprint with global machine-to-machine (M2M) connectivity outside the U.S. Through this agreement, Sprint will expand its M2M reach to include Sprint-branded global M2M connectivity to 180 countries.
ABI Research forecasts that there will be more than 106 million M2M connections globally, excluding the U.S., in 2012, growing to over 272 million M2M connections in 2016. Given this expected growth, the agreement enables Sprint to expand the reach of its business customers’ machines and basic operations beyond the United States in segments such as automotive and telematics, smart grid and metering, healthcare, retail point-of-sale and security.
“We look forward to working with Orange Business Services as a vital partner as we equip U.S. business customers with a strong global M2M capability and help them reduce complexity by working with a single support team,” said Yijing Brentano, vice president of international wholesale – Sprint. “Sprint recognizes that its customers compete in the global economy and they expect their processing, monitoring, diagnostic and distribution applications to work seamlessly wherever their business takes them. Thanks to Orange’s extensive and proven global network, we will provide our customers with seamless, global M2M solutions with the highest standard in quality of service.”
Orange Business Services, a leading global integrator of communications solutions for multinational corporations is delivering its global M2M connectivity service to Sprint through its International M2M Center (IMC) based in Brussels. With 200+ experts dedicated to M2M, Orange Business Services brings together expertise in consulting, design, innovation, integration, project management and service management along with leading-edge knowledge of the M2M ecosystem. Its global network provides IP access in 220 countries and territories and supports more than 2.5 million active M2M connections.
“We are thrilled to be Sprint’s partner for end-to-end M2M connectivity outside the U.S.,” said Rodolphe Frugès, vice president, Internet of Things and M2M – France Telecom-Orange. “The choice of Orange by Sprint, a major telecommunications carrier, is a great recognition of our M2M quality of service and global footprint. We look forward to extending this to Sprint’s enterprise customers as they deploy connected applications that require global and carrier-grade M2M solutions.”
