Ericsson helps China Telecom with its IoT Open Platform

The Chinese technology gold-rush continues with Ericsson keen to talk up its IoT platform partnership with China Telecom.

The China Telecom IoT Open Platform is founded on Ericsson’s Device Connection Platform, which in turn is now part of Ericsson IoT Accelerator initiative launched last year. Vendors and operators alike aspire to offer complete IoT products, featuring liberal use of terms like ‘end-to-end’ and ‘solution’. This seems to be a good example of that sort of thing.

The scope of this platform is global, with the announcement making liberal reference to China’s ‘One Belt One Road’ strategy, which refers to the economic belt defined by the traditional ‘Silk Road’ trade route between China and Europe. The fact that this is a collaboration between Chinese and European companies presumably contributed to that positioning.

“The IoT market is growing very rapidly and we aim to use our expertise in this area to help our customers capitalize on this opportunity,” said Magnus Rahm, Head of Global Service Operations at Ericsson. “Together with China Telecom, we can play a key role in realizing the tremendous potential of the IoT by reinventing processes, creating new services, and capturing new revenue.”

It’s possible this could be a bigger deal for Ericsson than it is for China Telecom, given the apparent focus on China from its rival, Nokia. The other two major networking vendors – Huawei and ZTE – are of course Chinese, but this won’t necessarily work to their advantage in securing business in the country.

The Chinese state knows that its continued growth as a global economic player relies on a perception that there is a level playing field for foreign companies. This One Belt initiative seems to be a political statement in favour of internationalism and it could be that Ericsson and Nokia see this as a golden opportunity to compete in the world’s largest telecoms market.