Co-located at the event was the Connected World Conference, sponsored by Raco Wireless, Verizon Telematics, Cycle 30, T-Mobile, and many others. Located in the back corner of the show floor, the Conference was sparsely populated (only one auto manufacturer was in attendance to receive an award during the Connected Car 2014 awards presentation) and plagued by production problems like audio feedback. Still, the content was highly relevant and valuable, such as an NFC track and a session on wearable technology that brought out experts from Adidas, Lumo BodyTech, Misfit Wearables (makers of Shine), and GTX Corp, makers of GPS-enabled SmartSoles (shoe inserts) that monitor elderly or mentally impaired patients who have a tendency to wander off. One of the key takeaways: for connected, wearable devices to take off, they must be either beautiful or invisible.

Who leads in customer care?

Which U.S. mobile service providers deliver the best customer care? This front-facing component of customer experience management (CEM) is more important than ever, according a new study from J.D. Power, and AT&T and MetroPCS are out in front. The most crucial components of customer care, says J.D. Power, are resolving customer issues quickly and within the first contact.

Ericsson makes moves in video

Ericsson bought its way further into the video ecosystem this week with the purchase of Azuki Systems, a provider of TV-anywhere platforms for content owners, service providers, and broadcasters. The acquisition will extend the capabilities of Mediaroom, which Ericsson purchased from Microsoft last September, to include OTT and out-of-the-home content delivery. Always moving, Ericsson also demoed its LTE Broadcast solution at a cricket match and launched an innovation lab for SDN.

M2M or IoT?

Machine to machine communications (M2M) is being pre-empted by another hot buzzword: Internet of Things (IoT). While they are used interchangeably, M2M tends to refer to devices that communicate with each other, such as manufacturing systems and connected vending machines, and IoT tends to refer to devices connected to humans, like smart watches and fitness monitoring devices.

Leading the pack of recent stories, AT&T and IBM announced a new global alliance agreement to develop solutions that help support IoT. The two companies will initially focus on creating new solutions targeted for city governments and mid-size utilities.

“Smarter cities, cars, homes, machines and consumer devices will drive the growth of the Internet of Things along with the infrastructure that goes with them, unleashing a wave of new possibilities for data gathering, predictive analytics, and automation,” said Rick Qualman, Vice President, Strategy & Business Development, Telecom Industry, IBM. “The new collaboration with AT&T will offer insights from crowdsourcing, mobile applications, sensors and analytics on the cloud, enabling all organizations to better listen, respond and predict.”