Although the proliferation of services delivered by mobile networks, including mobile broadband, has been groundbreaking, the actual use of mobile broadband to manage, control and deliver services is still in its early stages, AMTA Chief Executive Officer, Chris Althaus, said.

He was speaking at the RadComms09 Conference in Sydney last week. The mobile telecommunications industry called on the Federal Government to fast-track spectrum allocation decisions to ensure the mobile telecommunications industry could meet surging consumer demand.

Mr Althaus said Australia could not afford indecision on three key spectrum allocation issues at a time of unprecedented economic volatility.

He raised the issue of M2M applications or machine-to-machine.

A recent article in TelephonyOnline says the M2M world is starting to evolve from one where connected devices transmitted only the minutest amounts of data to one craving broadband capacities that only a 3G wireless network can deliver.

Consequently, M2M service providers are starting to get pressure from their customers to deliver data services that can feed video surveillance systems, real-time telemetry systems and even car onboard entertainment systems.

Although most are aware of receiving and sending data such as texts or emails via a mobile phone, what is less familiar are the hundreds of other mobile data exchanges, ranging from GPS navigation to land sensors providing early warnings on environment changes such as earthquakes or remotely monitored pace makers for improved healthcare.

The generic application of M2M communication is increasingly independent of having a hard wired connection at an economic cost increasingly viable for more applications.

Commercial opportunities for M2M include: automatic meter reading; road traffic management; machine breakdown prevention; remote security management; fleet management; parking sensors; materials fatigue monitoring; mobile phone banking; product transport tracking.