The Telstra Corporation Ltd (ASX: TLS) share price is in the green today after the company signed its "largest-ever" Internet of Things deal in Australia.
Telstra shares are currently swapping hands at $4.09, up 1.36% on yesterday's close. For comparison, the S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) is rising 1.14%.
Let's take a look at what's impacting the company.
New Internet of Things (IoT) deal
Telstra has entered a $100 million IoT deal with Intellihub Group. Intellihub is a Sydney-based company that provides smart metering and data services to the energy and utilities market.
The deal will involve Telstra providing more than 4 million IoT SIMS to the company within the next decade.
Internet of Things refers to any physical objects or "thing" that is connected with the internet. This could be a phone, microwave, coffee maker, lamp, car, sensor, bus, solar panel, or any other object.
The IoT SIMS will be integrated with Intellihub's smart meters to help the company manage energy demand.
What did management say?
Commenting on the announcement, Telstra group executive David Burns said:
The deal comes at an exciting time for us, with more than 5 million devices now connected to our IoT network.
This solution demonstrates the power of Telstra IoT in finding real-world solutions and will enable Intellihub's smart meters to get even smarter, providing Intellihub and its customers with deeper, real-time insights to manage the different elements of the energy network.
We have the largest IoT network in Australia – around 4 million square kilometres of NB-IoT coverage and around 3 million square kilometres of LTE-M coverage.
It has been a good few days for the Telstra share price. It has risen more than 4% over the past week amid plenty of positive news from the company.
Australian Financial Review reported today that Telstra will pay superannuation to its employees while they are on unpaid parental leave.
The telco also reported yesterday it had won a speed test award for Australia's fastest mobile network. Telstra's network and Infrastructure executive Iskra Nikolova said:
Ookla (a global speed test company) found not only that we were faster nationally, but that our mobile network was faster on both median download and median upload speeds in the three largest Australian cities, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
The latest news comes on the back of a positive response from the market to the company investing $1.6 billion in 'nation-building' projects.
My Foolish colleague James reported analysts are generally positive about the projects despite having varied opinions on them.
Share price snapshot
The Telstra share price has soared 29% over the past year but has descended 2% year to date.
For perspective, the benchmark ASX 200 Index has returned 4.6% over the past year.
Telstra has a market capitalisation of about $48 billion based on the current share price.
