Telstra has taken its third significant IoT initiative within a week with ASX-listed Buddy Platform announcing that Telstra will be the primary sales channel in Australia for its Buddy Ohm building energy management system.

Buddy told the ASX the deal will represent the largest reseller agreement for the company to date. Its Buddy Ohm products are already sold in the Caribbean, US, Australia, Canada and, soon, the United Kingdom.

For Telstra the deal follows it early this week announcing its acquisition of Australian-owned MTData – a company providing vehicle tracking and fleet management products to global markets – and becoming a reseller of Smart Parking systems from the company of the same name.

Telstra CEO Andy Penn, at the company’s recent investor day, said Telstra would see a higher proportion of value arising from the internet of things and other enterprise platforms including data analytics, software applications above the layer of the network and through content and digital advertising.

Stephen Elop, group executive, technology, evolution and strategy said Telstra saw an addressable market in IoT growing at 52 percent to $6.6 billion by 2023.

Buddy said it intends Telstra to become the preferred mobile operator reseller of Buddy Ohm in Australia and that it will migrate most of its existing Buddy Ohm customer base to Telstra.

“In doing so, Telstra is expected to gain access to a projected multimillion dollar pipeline of Buddy Ohm customers from the commencement of the deal, and Buddy will be able to streamline its operations to focus on supporting Telstra and its growing roster of global mobile operator resellers,” Buddy said.

Buddy has just raised $23 million from a share placement, which it said was to enable it to “pursue a potential distribution arrangement spanning more than 100 markets” for Buddy Ohm.

The company said it would retain the majority of revenues generated from Telstra sales of Buddy Ohm.

Melbourne-based M2M Connectivity will source Telstra Control Centre mobile data SIM cards and facilitate distribution of Buddy Ohm to customers. Current Buddy partner, Skybridge Group will continue to be the primary installation partner across Australia for Telstra-sourced sales.

Telstra Control Centre is the telco’s resale of the Cisco Jasper service which enables manufacturers to embed sims in equipment that will then operate in any country where there is a mobile network operated by a Jasper partner, such as Telstra, and which enables service provides to gather data from those devices wherever they are in the world.

Buddy said training of Telstra sales staff in Buddy products had commenced, and the first sales were expected in the first quarter of 2018.

However, the deal has not yet been signed. Buddy said: “Whilst Telstra and the company are well advanced with negotiations and the parties are committed to finalising the deal, the arrangements remain subject to formal documentation.”