AT&T Partners with Silver Spring Networks

Wireless carrier AT&T announced on Tuesday that it had reached a teaming agreement with Silver Spring Networks through which the operator would deliver 3G wireless communication services to utility customers of Silver Spring all around the United States. According to AT&T, the new agreement is the latest step it took in the direction of expanding its reach in the M2M (machine to machine) communications space.

According to the mobile phone operator, its nationwide, high speed, cellular data network will enable the “aggregation of data collection and transport of smart grid information to the Silver Spring’s UtilityIQ back-office application suite.” Moreover, the company further mentions that its suite of M2M pricing plans have been developed specifically for the smart grid market, something that proves its wireless solution a great choice for utilities.

“We are thrilled to be working with Silver Spring and their growing number of successful deployments, as we continue to expand our smart grid solutions that enable utilities to utilize wireless technology as backhaul for customer data,” said Chris Hill, vice president, mobility product management, AT&T Business Solutions. “AT&T is providing utilities with an economically compelling carrier network they can rely on for monitoring energy use and managing consumption.”

There are a wide range of strategic mobility products and services that AT&T offers for the utility industry, the carrier notes. Among them, we can count “wireless solutions for field service workers, outage detection and remote monitoring.” At the same time, the company notes that it has a dedicated team of specialists that can understand the business process from end to end, and which can provide business value to customers.

“This relationship exemplifies Silver Spring's commitment to bring the broadest ecosystem of companies to deliver an open, end-to-end and highly secure IP platform for the utility industry. 3G is capable of supporting portions of a smart grid implementation and we are pleased to team with AT&T,” said Judy Lin, chief product officer at Silver Spring.