01 March 2012, Mobile World Congress, Barcelona,- Telefónica, through its recently created unit Telefónica Digital, and China Unicom, with the collaboration of Giesecke & Devrient (G&D), have proven a secure, pre-standard system for remotely managing M2M SIMs subscription data based on the principles of the embedded SIM.
The system allows the transferring of subscriptions between Telefónica Spain, Telefónica UK, Telefónica Germany and China Unicom over the air.
Telefónica and China Unicom will now be able to provide global services to their customers based on a unique SIM adapted to the local requirements. Secure profiles from Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) can be loaded later in the supply chain, including post-sale, and their profiles can be revised during the lifetime of the device. It will, among other things, allow a simple swapping of MNOs to support a change of subscription, a network upgrade or swap out, a change of device ownership or long term relocations.
With this type of remote subscription management, device makers can manufacture devices with M2M SIMs on a cost optimised production setup, while MNOs can customise their M2M connectivity offerings for this specific target market.
This successful test will also provide important input for the ongoing standardisation in order to improve the subscription management concept.
The main cornerstones of this trial are the subscription management enabled M2M SIMs, a subscription management platform – hosted in a secure G&D environment- and an MNO specific portal developed by Telefónica and China Unicom.
This project derives from the strategic agreement signed by the two companies in October 2011 to develop M2M and the internet of things.