December 2012 Newsletter No.20

Some Considerations before Putting Machine-to-Machine Networks into Service

Figure 1. An example of a typical M2M network.

We examined the characteristics of machine-to-machine (M2M) networks, as depicted in Figure 1, to determine if they can be categorized and managed similar to conventional telecommunications networks, such as telephones, television, or the Internet, or if additional regulations need to be implemented before putting them into service. In this newsletter, we list some of our observations and argue that M2M networks belong to a new style of telecommunications network, and thus they should be treated differently.