T-Mobile USA announced an embedded SIM for Machine-to-Machine (M2M) solutions. Nearly the size of a head of a pin, the embedded SIM withstands challenging environmental factors such as temperature, humidity and motion to deliver more reliable wireless connectivity, the company says.

In addition to the much smaller size, the embedded SIM differs from today’s SIMs in that it’s built from silicon – not plastic. The embedded SIM is designed to be hard-mounted onto M2M modules, allowing customers to go directly from the factory to the field without having to provision and manually insert a SIM card.

Concurrent with the release of the embedded SIM, T-Mobile announced an alliance with Echelon Corporation to accelerate the adoption of the smart grid in the North American market by reducing the communications cost of smart meters through the deployment of Echelon’s Networked Energy Services (NES) system over T-Mobile’s GSM network.

As part of the agreement, Echelon will use T-Mobile's embedded SIM within a cellular radio module to enable all the Echelon smart meters on a given low-voltage transformer to communicate back to the utility over the smart grid. T-Mobile will offer the pricing plans for the data usage.

Verizon Wireless has also gotten in on the rush to smart girds, partnering with Itron in a joint marketing agreement for development of two-way communications that support utilities' access to energy usage data. Operating on Verizon Wireless' network, the Itron OpenWay Cell Relay allows utilities to more collect, measure and manage energy data.