Telecommunications major MTN has leveraged the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) to open up a “whole new world” into other industries for the JSE-listed firm’s business arm, while enabling African enterprises to gain greater control over the connection and management of machine-to-machine (M2M) applications.

The new IoT platform, launched in South Africa on Thursday, would be deployed across the 22 countries in which MTN operates over the next year, to allow enterprises to “do business better and be much more efficient”, as well as have more control over their connected devices and Sim cards.

MTN’s introduction of the dedicated M2M platform was the “start of a journey” to enter the evolving world of IoT, which would record around 360-million connections worldwide by 2018.

“In South Africa, the wholesale M2M market – one aspect of IoT – is already worth an estimated R350-million and expected to grow to R1.2-billion by 2017,” explained MTN Group chief enterprise officer Mteto Nyati.

Speaking at the launch of the platform at MTN’s headquarters in Roodepoort, he said MTN aimed to leverage its own expansive infrastructure and the age of the Internet to bolster its customers’ growth across Africa.

“We are best placed to be the partner of choice to business growing in Africa,” he noted.

The platform boasted a dedicated M2M network, which meant that businesses did not have to compete with voice or data traffic to connect devices and systems, allowing networked devices to “exchange information and perform actions, responding intelligently to their environments without human intervention”.

The platform would enable MTN to further delve into sectors such as utilities, agriculture, fleet management, logistics, manufacturing and security, while assisting customers in cutting costs and overcoming accessibility barriers, with a global M2M Sim card providing customers the same rate for M2M activity across MTN’s footprint in Africa, explained Nyati.

“There are significant business opportunities for aspiring developers in Africa to develop solutions for African challenges,” he commented, as he unveiled MTN’s inaugural Mind-2-Machine Challenge, wherein participants, including application developers, students and small enterprises, were tasked with conceiving and producing innovative, workable M2M solutions.

“The initiative aims to identify and enable talented African developers to create scalable and relevant business solutions that solve real-world problems,” Nyati said.

In effect, it was MTN’s way of investing in local entrepreneurs and skills development initiatives and providing a shot in the arm for up-and-coming developers.

The challenge provided a foundation for aspiring application developers to create M2M applications in targeted sectors, with an opportunity for participants to access MTN’s footprint.

The challenge winners, which would be announced in a few months, would see their solution taken to market and applied on the new IoT platform with MTN Business.