Tech Mahindra, Crosscall Push Rugged AI Gear into North America
Tech Mahindra is teaming with French device maker Crosscall to sell carrier-approved rugged phones and edge AI safety tools to oil rigs, factory floors and telecom field crews across the US and Canada.
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Tech Mahindra has partnered with French firm Crosscall to build and sell AI-driven, mission-critical mobility solutions for enterprise customers in North America, the companies said.
The agreement is aimed at industries where people work in harsh or remote conditions and need reliable communication gear: oil and gas, heavy manufacturing, and telecom infrastructure.
Crosscall designs and sells “rugged” phones, tablets and devices built to survive drops, dust, water, extreme temperatures, and constant field use.
The company was founded in 2009 in Aix-en-Provence and pitches itself not as a consumer electronics brand but as a work-tool supplier to police, utilities, industrial sites, transport networks, and emergency responders.
Its phones are sealed, reinforced, and rated for long battery life and loud audio in noisy environments.
Under the partnership deal, Tech Mahindra will run Crosscall’s devices through its testing and certification programs so they can be cleared for use on North American carrier networks. That matters because in the US and Canada you generally cannot deploy a new phone or tablet across a fleet of workers, say 2,000 line engineers at an energy company, unless the device is certified to work on major carrier networks and meets safety, reliability, and software standards.
Distribution will also run through Quality One Wireless, a Florida-based private distributor that works with large US mobile carriers and device makers to get approved hardware into enterprise and carrier channels. Quality One said it will handle North America channel support for Crosscall, including after-sales service and logistics.
Beyond hardware approvals, Tech Mahindra and Crosscall plan to co-develop software for these devices. The focus here is AI and machine learning at the edge. In plain terms, putting intelligence on the device so a worker out in the field gets real-time guidance without waiting for someone in a control room.
The companies said they are looking at use cases such as predictive maintenance (spotting that a machine is about to fail before it fails), worker safety (raising an alert if a lone worker falls or is exposed to dangerous conditions), and real-time decision support in places with weak connectivity.
For Tech Mahindra, the deal gives it a physical endpoint, read rugged phones, tablets, accessories, mounts, and sensors, to bundle with its existing industrial tech services in North America.
The company already sells offerings it calls Factory 4.0 (automation and digitization of shop floors), private 5G networks (closed, high-speed wireless networks inside plants and campuses rather than public cellular), and device management and orchestration (remote control, updates, security policy enforcement across thousands of field devices).
For Crosscall, the upside is US scale. North America is the biggest market for field-service and public-safety communications hardware, but it’s hard for a non-US brand to break in without a carrier-backed certification path, a services firm to integrate the tech into customer workflows, and a distributor trusted by AT&T/Verizon/regional carriers. Tech Mahindra and Quality One together give Crosscall that edge.
“The future of rugged devices lies in their ability to serve as intelligent enablers across some of the most challenging environmental conditions,” said Manish Mangal, President and Head, Americas Communication Business, Tech Mahindra.
He said combining Crosscall’s hardware with Tech Mahindra’s certification, testing, and AI-led app development “brings together the resilience of purpose-built devices with the intelligence of advanced technologies,” and will help enterprises and telecom operators improve safety, efficiency, and innovation at scale.
Nicolas Zibell, CEO of Crosscall, said the company is “joining forces with Tech Mahindra to shape the future of enterprise mobility,” arguing that rugged devices paired with Tech Mahindra’s digital engineering and managed services can “empower businesses and fuel growth across the US and beyond.”
Quality One Wireless CEO John Chiorando said the distributor is “excited to expand our exclusive North America channel opportunities with Crosscall,” and will support the partnership with distribution and care of Crosscall devices.
