France Telecom-Orange and Deutsche Telekom have agreed to explore potential areas of cooperation in several fields, the first of which are an M2M cooperation agreement and a joint project on improving Wi-Fi user experience while roaming. The M2M agreement will initially cover France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg, and is aimed at increasing service quality and standards for cross-border M2M communications. The operators aim to include all of their affiliated mobile network operators and to expand globally through partnerships with others. It is intended to be the foundation of a seamless network offering reliable cross-boarder services anywhere in the world, facilitating the development of e-energy, e-health, connected home and connected car services. The Wi-Fi project will see the two groups jointly explore solutions to boost customer experience and roaming conditions on each others’ Wi-Fi networks. They are working from the conviction that future international travellers will want to be able to download large amounts of data without having to choose between Wi-Fi and 3G mobile access.
Exploratory talks will take place to identify the potential value creation in a number of other areas for both companies and to benefit their respective mobile and fixed line customers in terms of service quality and easy to use service offerings. The potential fields of cooperation are radio access network sharing in Europe, improving Wi-Fi user experience while roaming, equipment standardisation, M2M standards and quality of service for cross-border services, as well as a set of new growth business development domains, namely home media servers, cross-border e-health services, connected car technology and in-care infotainment services, content and technical enablers for TV and video services.
