Telecom Italia Mobile announced last week the Z-SIM, a SIM card “that allows mobile phones to ‘communicate’ with TV set-top boxes, computers, household appliances and a host of home electronics devices.” Just exactly what it is isn’t completely clear. The TIM press release calls it a SIM card with “in-built radio technology”, which makes it sound like the SIM itself has a radio — which sounds a bit odd, but must be the case since the release also says it will work with any TIM phone.
I’ve surmised (along with Eric from PhoneScoop that it uses Zigbee, a short-range, low-power wireless standard intended for monitoring and control applications, like home automation. Of course, this is based on the use of the letter “Z” in the name, and looking at a web page in Italian when I, despite my name, don’t speak Italian. Google translate, however, assures me it’s the case.
Let’s not get lost in the details, though. We’ve been hearing for years that home automation, controlled via our mobile phones was coming, and — surprise, surprise — it hasn’t. The problem isn’t just getting the technology into phones, but also into lights and washing machines and all that stuff that people already own. TIM’s new product won’t necessarily help that, but they did outline some other uses for it — connecting a mobile phone to a set-top box to buy pay-per-view TV programming, for instance — that could soon come in to use.
But this is just one piece of news setting the backdrop for growth in “P2M” — person to machine — mobile communications. Think back to last week’s announcement by 3 UK of its spy camera people can call and get live video from, and the Sony Ericsson Bluetooth robot camera they were showing off at CeBIT (not sure that ever actually got released, though). M2M (machine-to-machine) communications is already a huge business, and there can be some crossover from it into everyday life. Simple services, like being able to call your TiVo when you’re gone to set it to record a program, and so on. These applications will begin to emerge in the next year or so — what types do you expect, and what would you like to see?
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