Do you recall the Will Smith film "i, Robot'" (2004)? In this movie, the world is set to be taken over by VIKI, a backend computer, directing robots to rebel against humanity. VIKI communicates via radio frequency "over the air" to all these robots [re: machines or devices], instructing them when, where and how to rebel. If this was reality, the network in use would obviously be unsecure, taking into account that it was misused by VIKI.
Maybe this comparison is a little farfetched, but today this situation is not that far from reality. The simple fact is that already today connected mobile devices are outnumbering people, and this growth is set to continue reaching 50 billion devices by 2025 – outnumbering connected subscribers by 800 percent! Come 2020, 
mobile machine sessions will be more than 30 times higher than the number of mobile person sessions (Forrester, 2010). Related machine-to-machine (M2M) connectivity revenues are already set to double over the next four years to reach close to $7 billion (Yankee, March 2011) by 2016.
So, it is not a question of whether machines can "talk" to machines using a mobile network – they already do. The question is: How will operators optimize their position in the M2M value chain and offer rich M2M communications quickly, cheaply, securely and reliably?
Using mobile communications to connect machines for smart meter reading, remote sensors, equipment monitoring, automated software updates and health care systems actually has been around since the 1990s, and most mobile operators offering M2M services consider it a low margin, niche activity. However, demand for M2M communications is experiencing significant growth. The following factors are the primary drivers for this:
• The high performance and reliability of the mobile channel is firmly embedded in society today, and the increased quality and its high performance support a profitable M2M business case for mobile operators, as well as businesses, seeking ways to improve efficiency and reduce costs;
• The worldwide adoption of mobile applications and devices, such as GPS navigation, eReaders, tablets, professional mobile devices and the need to maintain and update, or upgrade the software on them (e.g. update applications, upload new maps, upgrade with the latest security capabilities, etc);
• Various market initiatives, like the GSM Association's drive for standardization and application development, stimulate the growing adoption of mobile M2M communications that are often focused on machine maintenance and support.
Typically M2M communications are used for the exchange of data between a remote machine and a backend IT infrastructure, consequently triggering interactions or services without human interfaces.
Today most machines are connected via an "online" IP connection. For a long time, this approach was sufficient, as there was only limited demand on mobile IP connections and bandwidth. However, with today's uptake of smartphones and connected devices by consumers – and the enormous growth in the use of bandwidth-consuming mobile applications – bandwidth has become a scarce resource which is relatively expensive for operators to use for low margin traffic.
Mobile messaging is seen as a cost effective, reliable addition to IP connectivity for M2M communications. An example of this is using SMS to wake-up the application on a device to trigger setting up an IP connection. This approach significantly reduces wasteful consumption of bandwidth by "always on" applications that crowd the IP network for updates.
The need for the mobile operator to provide an enhanced, modified and efficient M2M communications service is becoming increasingly important to compete via differentiation in the wireless access space. There are many network capabilities that mobile operators can monetize with their M2M communications offerings.
These can be found in the area of:
• Management of network connectivity and access, including traffic inspection;
• Policy management across the data bearers (IP and messaging) to ensure optimization and enforce service differentiation, for example to prevent costly updates and downloads for off-net devices;
• IP only, messaging only - and messaging combined with IP (GPRS) services ;
• Security of the data streams (IP and messaging);
• Intelligence on the data usage and services provided;
• Billing and charging of the service according to a variety of business models.
Capitalizing on the unique strengths of their network and brand, operators have the opportunity to enhance, modify and perfect a differentiated M2M communications service to better position themselves against aggregators or MVNE operators in this fiercely competitive, yet crowded, space. It is, therefore, vital that the most advanced tools are made available to those working in this space, to seize the tremendous opportunities M2M presents.
Anantha Ramu is vice president, North America, at Acision.