The Hidden Cost of Single-Carrier Thinking: How Solve Connected a Nationwide Billboard Network
Keri Gunther, General Manager
A digital signage manufacturer came to us with a problem that had nothing to do with the actual signs. They build large-format digital billboards installed along highways and major roadways, displaying real-time advertising that updates throughout the day. But, great signage doesn’t matter much if nobody can see it.
They’d deployed more than 100 billboards across a single state, and the cellular coverage behind each one varied. A carrier that performed reliably in one area weakened considerably a few miles away. In some cases, only a third carrier provided any usable signal at all. That’s the reality of what happens when hardware is spread out geographically — no single carrier maintains consistent, dependable performance everywhere.
Three Carriers, One Headache
We’ve worked with this customer for years, starting with straightforward cellular connectivity across Patchy coverage became an operational burden for this customer. Supporting three carriers means:
- maintaining three separate contracts
- reconciling three invoices
- navigating three different support processes
That burden also impacts their customers. When a board goes dark, every business that purchases a sign asks: who is responsible for getting this back online?
Without a single point of accountability, that question doesn’t have a clean answer. The manufacturer found themselves fielding issues for a part of the business they never intended to own.
So, they called Solve Networks.
Rather than standardizing on a single carrier and accepting the coverage gaps that decision would create, we provided a single SIM product that can connect to all 3 major networks. Each location now has access to run on all three major carriers, depending on which performs best at that spot. It’s a simplified process of allowing each site to self-evaluate and connect to the carrier that provides the most reliable signal, and adjust if conditions change.
This customer no longer deals with scattered data issues. Instead, they see a single data pool shared across every sign, with access to all major carriers, under one invoice, with one support line to call regardless of the carrier at any given location. Plus, their own customers — the businesses that actually own the signs — get the benefit of that simplicity too.
The takeaway for any distributed network
It’s tempting to treat this as a story specific to digital signage, but the underlying lesson applies far more broadly:
Reliable connectivity was never about a better SIM card — it’s refusing to bet an entire network on a single carrier.
For this customer, Solve’s solution has scaled alongside them. Whether they’re managing five signs or 5,000, the process behind the scenes doesn’t change — Solve Networks Multi-Network SIM is deployed and the customer automatically connects to the best available network per site with two other networks available as back up.
Building signage is their job. Making sure it never goes dark is ours.
Ready to stop managing carriers and start managing outcomes? Talk to Solve Networks about a connectivity partnership built around your sites.
About the Author
Keri Gunther is General Manager of Solve Networks, bringing 25 years in industrial technology to the job of solving connectivity for the toughest IIoT environments. Before joining Solve, he spent 13 years at Moxa as IIoT and Computing Division Manager, building global account relationships and go-to-market strategy around edge computing — experience that now shapes how he sees the whole picture for Solve’s customers. He’s spent the last five years at Solve focused exclusively on the industrial connectivity problem, and he’ll tell you it’s the most interesting work he’s done yet. Off the clock (if there is such a thing in connectivity), you’ll find him working on his golf game or planning the next trip to see family in Switzerland.
