How to Choose an IoT Connectivity Provider
Keri Gunther, General Manager, Solve Networks
On paper, every connectivity provider does the same three things: sells you a SIM, connects it to a carrier network, and sends an invoice. But the similarities tend to stop there.
Some providers are functionally resellers — they’ve repackaged a carrier’s data plan, and when something breaks, you’re the one troubleshooting. Others build the relationship around uptime, not just uptake. They know your sites, they’ve configured failover before you needed it, and when a device drops offline, they see it before you do.
The real distinction isn’t what they sell you on day one — it’s whether they’re still paying attention on day one hundred.
What’s the difference between a connectivity reseller and a managed partner?
A reseller sells you a SIM and a data plan, while a managed partner is actually accountable for the outcome. Where resellers can hand off a product and step back, managed partners step in to monitor deployments, catch problems before you call, and treat a dark remote site as their emergency too.
For managed partners, the job doesn’t end at activation. And the gap between the two models rarely shows up on an invoice — it shows up as a well site with no telemetry, a SCADA alert that never fires, or a technician driving three hours to fix something a carrier failover would have caught automatically. Those are the real costs of working with a reseller.
Which connectivity providers fit mid-sized industrial enterprises?
Mid-sized industrial operations need a provider sized to match their footprint — one that can consolidate multiple sites, multiple carriers, and multiple SIMs into a single invoice and a single data pool without enterprise-scale overhead.
This is where “the cheapest data” quickly becomes the wrong decision. A per-SIM discount doesn’t account for the cost of managing multiple carrier relationships or reconciling the invoices from different vendors every month.
We’ve seen this play out directly with one of the country’s largest digital signage manufacturers — an OEM whose customers were juggling different carriers at each location, sometimes across a single customer’s footprint of 100+ sites. Rather than force one carrier to serve the purpose of three, we:
- provided a single SIM solution that could access all major carries, connect to the best signal per site, and should it go down, connect to another available carrier right away
- consolidated the result into one invoice
- created one pooled data plan for their customers
What should I ask a connectivity provider before signing?
Before signing with an IoT connectivity provider, ask about:
- Their support model (Who answers, and how fast?)
- Carrier neutrality (Are they tied to one network or several?)
- Visibility (Can you see device status yourself, or do you have to call and ask?)
- Their escalation path when a site goes dark (What happens next?)
Choosing an IoT connectivity provider isn’t really about the SIM card. It’s about who’s accountable when the connection matters most. If you’re evaluating providers right now, the team at Solve Networks would love to talk to you.
About the Author
Keri Gunther is the General Manager of Solve Networks and has spent the last two decades in the industrial technology space. He joined Solve five years ago to focus exclusively on the IoT connectivity problem, and he’ll tell you it’s the most interesting work he’s ever done. When he’s not keeping industrial operations connected, Keri is working on his golf handicap, reel mowing his grass to look like a fairway, cheering on the Houston Astros, and making regular trips to Switzerland to visit a large extended family.
