Stay Connected or Fall Behind: The New Rules of Industrial IoT
Keri Gunther, General Manager
I’ve been around semiconductors, computers, networks, and routers since I graduated from college—and for the last two decades, almost exclusively the industrial market. I’ve watched this space evolve from the early days of M2M connectivity, when getting an edge device to reliably connect felt like a minor miracle, to where we are today: LEO satellites delivering high-speed connectivity to the most remote corners of the earth, eSIM technology that lets you change carriers over the air, and IoT deployments running autonomously in the field for years without a technician ever touching them.
I say all of that not to impress you, but to give you context for what I’m about to tell you: we are at an inflection point. And if you’re managing connectivity for industrial operations—whether that’s oil and gas, manufacturing, utilities, or anything in between—the decisions you make about connectivity in the next few years are going to matter more than they ever have.
The market is moving faster than most people realize…
In the next three to five years, this industry is going to continue to evolve and grow in ways that are genuinely exciting. We’ve already seen LEO satellite technology explode with high-speed connectivity in areas that were effectively unreachable just a few years ago. We’re also seeing the rapid adoption of eSIM and the ability to change connectivity providers over the air, which fundamentally changes how you think about carrier lock-in and network flexibility.
The telecom industry is evolving at a pace that feels almost relentless right now, whether you’re dealing with small amounts of data or massive throughput requirements. The MVNO connectivity space in particular is going to look very different in five years than it does today.
The most interesting development I’ve seen recently is the maturation of LEO satellite technology. This is no longer a prototype or a pilot program. Customers are deploying it in real-world industrial applications right now. The ability to get super high-speed, large amounts of data in every corner of the world is opening up new applications and architectures that just haven’t been possible before. If you haven’t already looked seriously at LEO technology as part of your connectivity strategy, now is the time.
The biggest misconception I hear — and why it matters
Here’s something I tell almost every new customer we talk to: working directly with a single carrier is not the advantage you think it is.
I hear it constantly. “We have a preferred relationship with one of the big carriers.” “We’re getting priority on their network.” I understand the logic, and I get that it sounds like leverage. In reality, for industrial IoT deployments, it’s a vulnerability.
As a mobile virtual network operator, Solve Networks gives you access to all of the top-tier network providers across the US—and globally, through multiple partners. When you layer in LEO satellite connectivity with that, you have redundant channels that a single-carrier relationship simply cannot match. There’s preferential treatment on a single network, and then there’s having multiple networks available for resiliency. Those are two very different things, and for industrial operations where uptime isn’t a nice-to-have, the distinction matters.
The question isn’t whether you’re getting preferred status on a single network. The question is what happens when that network goes down, and do you have access to other available networks.
What good connectivity consulting actually looks like
One of the things I’ve come to understand after years in this space is that most of the confusion customers walk in with isn’t their fault. There’s a tremendous amount of noise in the MVNO market. Vague marketing, buzzwords, plans that look similar on the surface but perform very differently in the field. By the time a lot of operators start evaluating options, they’re already overwhelmed.
What we do at Solve—and what I believe separates us from the rest of the market—is consult every customer on the front end with real technical resources. We’re not trying to figure out what plan to sell you. We’re trying to understand your application: what the device is, where it’s deployed, what the data requirements look like, and what the security posture needs to be. Then we build the solution around that. Not the other way around.
Whether you have one device or tens of thousands, the approach is the same. Granular, specific, and built for your application—not whatever’s easiest to package and push.
The big three: reliability, efficiency, security
When I think about what our solutions actually deliver for customers, I frame it around three dimensions: reliability, efficiency, and security.
Reliability is the foundation. We’re bringing multiple connectivity offerings so that customers stay connected regardless of which underlying carrier or technology they’re on at any given moment.
Efficiency is where people often leave money on the table. Speed to launch matters—the faster you’re connected, the faster you’re operational. But data efficiency matters just as much. Optimizing how your devices consume data, how pools are structured and how overages are avoided—that’s where the commercial impact of connectivity decisions really shows up on the bottom line.
Security is the one I think gets underestimated the most. Keeping customer assets untouched by the public internet. Keeping devices on private connections. Making sure that the network your critical infrastructure is running on isn’t an open door for the kind of breaches that are becoming more common across industrial sectors every year.
If Solve Networks were a movie…
“I’d go with Project Hail Mary. Not so much the deep space part — but the reliability of the systems and the communication that needs to work without fail. It really speaks to our customers and the applications they’re running. A lot of times those systems need to operate without any human intervention, for years and years. That’s what we build for.”
What this looks like in practice
I’ll give you a real example of what happens when these principles come together:
We had a customer come to us with a significant problem. They had tens of thousands of devices deployed on public static IPs on one of the major carrier networks. The result was exactly what you’d expect: massive overage bills and serious security exposure.
We sat down with them, walked through their requirements, and built a path to private network connectivity using eSIM profiles. Then we pushed those profiles over the air to 3,000 devices (with many more in the queue) without a single truck roll. No downtime. No field technicians. We solved the cost problem and the security problem in the same move.
That’s what it looks like when connectivity is treated as a strategic layer of your operation, not just a utility.
Staying ahead of the connectivity curve
I can confidently tell you that the communications infrastructure that exists today will look different in five years. What that means for Solve is a constant investment in understanding what’s coming, so we can help our customers scale into new technologies without disruption.
If I had to distill everything I’ve said into a single thought, it’s this: connectivity is no longer a commodity decision. The right partner doesn’t just sell you a plan—they understand your application, build a solution around it, and stay engaged when things change. That’s what keeps me in this industry after two decades.
These are the kinds of conversations we have every day, and we’re always up for one more. Talk to our team today!
About the Author: Meet Keri Gunther
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.
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