Globetouch: "We are pushing to become market leader in M2M connectivity space"

An Interaction with Globetouch | TelecomDrive.com

Future is all about connecting the unconnected and in the era of Internet of Things – Machine to Machine connectivity is going to play a critical role in enabling great user experiences. This is where Globetouch – a global MVNO is putting a lot of effort today.  

Globetouch CEO and Board member, Riccardo Di Blasio speaks with Zia Askari from TelecomDrive.com about the company’s strategy to introduce innovative services in the market.

 What are the key priorities for Globetouch today?

Our current priorities revolve around the growth and expansion of our eco-system of global service providers. Cultivating this eco-system is the primary reason why we are the only global MVNO on the planet.

We place a heavy emphasis on innovation too, like our multi-ISMI technology which allows users of M2M to dynamically allocate profiles anywhere in the world.

Of course, these aspects go hand-in-hand with leveraging our global connectivity backbone, G-Connect, building specific IoT SaaS applications, through our G-Control and G-Fusion solutions, on top of it. This way we can deliver real-time analytics and control central functions for any connected device.

We’re pushing to become a market leader in the M2M connectivity space, with the automotive/connected car space being our key target to dominate.

Please share details on your global collaborative ecosystem approach?

Fundamentally, the need for a global connectivity backbone is still an unaddressed question today. The wireless network market is fragmented among hundreds of operators around the world, between MNO and MVNO.

All of them are domestic players, or regional players at best. By aggregating wireless connectivity across four different continents, we built a single pane of glass for any enterprise who requires M2M for their connected devices on a global scale.

We like to call ourselves the ‘AirBnB of connectivity’. It's a virtuoso system where everybody wins. On one side of the spectrum, the local operator see us as another channel to incrementally sell their local pipe to with no extra costs attached, whereas on the other side, end users consider us ‘the single throw to choke’ for any connectivity need.

This enables us to gain a competitive advantage in TTM, where we can deploy in weeks rather than months with ease of management, one bill, one settlement and a single point of contact.

How big is this ecosystem today and what are your plans to expand this globally?

Globetouch originated as a spin-off of a pre-existing company called Mobileum, which was fundamentally conceived on the same base operator eco-system. We had a head-start into the market and many big service providers around the world, whom we call ‘donors’, really gave us a boost.

We are still partnering with ‘donors’ on a weekly base, and today we cover four continents with the exception of Africa, which is on the roadmap for late 2018.

What level of support will 5G provide to the concept of connected car? When can we expect such cars and which geographies are likely to adopt it first?

5G is not only a bigger pipe, but the first step in networking technology that will bring Edge computing close to the devices, as opposed to traditional consolidated data centres or NOCs. As I highlight in my Medium blog post, Edge computing is likely to be a fundamental shape shifter in how we will live our lives in the future.

IoT is producing a huge number of connected devices. In the future, these devices will outnumber smart phones, which will require almost immediate computing due to the real time information they will be asked to process.

In terms of which geographies will drive adoption, China and the US will be at the front of the queue. Countries with state-of-the-art network infrastructures will see 5G implementation costs being lower compared to infrastructures that are still operating on obsolete networks.

I can see highly digitalised countries like Australia, New Zealand and the UK being leaders in propelling this innovation.

What innovations are being driven by your organisation in the connected car space?

Software. A car today is a smartphone with four wheels. Indeed, whilst software innovation will make autonomous driving a reality, it will be crucial for so much more.

The car is the new office space, the new home cinema, the new play room for our kids. The real battle to conquer end-users’ trust will be fought on the car screen, which will operate in much the same way as the Apple Store does on the iPhone.

At Globetouch, we’re addressing these emerging paradigms by providing connectivity to cars anywhere in the world. We’re also providing a host of additional software applications that will allow manufacturers and end-users to better manage their cars and gain precious information out of it.

In fact, we are already the connectivity provider for one of the largest car manufacturers in the world, which selected Globetouch for the majority of its fleet’s deployment on a worldwide scale.