10 questions to ask when choosing your IoT and mobile data provider

If you’re in telecoms, you’ve probably noticed the shift happening in the industry. 5G’s on its way in, and patience with fixed-line outages is on its way out.

Maybe you’ve even discovered the intelligent mobile data opportunity, seen the lucrative revenue streams that come with it, and said: ‘Yes please, that’s for me.’

But there are so many mobile and IoT providers to choose from. And it’s not a choice you should make lightly—you want to get it right the first time, with a partner who’s got the tech, knowledge, and drive to take your business to the top of the mobile market.

Decisions, decisions.

We’ve put together a list of questions you can ask your potential providers to help you find the perfect partner. Don’t go easy on them; their answers will tell you if they’ve got what it takes to keep your customers connected and get you that mobile revenue.

Let’s get started:

This is a good one to start with—you’ll want to know whether the partnership is worth your time and effort from the get go.

And if your IoT solution provider is worth their salt, they’ll be able to give you hard numbers for how much you can expect to earn, with case studies that prove it. Don’t settle for guesstimates!

Vet their method, and make sure they’re bringing everything you need to the table. The key things to look for here are:

A connectivity suite brimming with IoT and intelligent mobile data tech, from all of the cellular options, to LPWAN, to the market’s first 5G solutions.

And if you exclusively offer fixed-line services? Ask for mobile L2TP or on-demand backup connectivity.

Value-added services that can help you stand out from your competition. Like static IPs, eSIMs, adaptive tariffs, data aggregation, and local phone numbers on your SIMs; all icing on the connectivity cake.

Sales support, in the form of deal clinics, account mapping sessions, and account managers who understand your business. It’s not just about having the tech: find yourself a partner who’ll help you take IoT and mobile data straight to your customers.

You’re going to find IoT and mobile data opportunities worldwide—so check that your partner is equipped to help you go international.

The last thing you want is to lose days hammering out contracts with every operator in every country; so you’ll need roaming IoT SIMs that can swap networks on the fly, as well as a partner who can make your life easy and handle the roaming agreements with international operators for you.

Don’t compromise on this one! If you’re in a niche industry or need to get creative with a project, make sure your connectivity is flexible. The best providers will help you tinker with an IoT solution down to the tiniest detail.

Maybe you don’t know how long your retail deployment needs to last, and you’ll need to change your tariffs on the fly. Or perhaps your customer is a farmer whose data usage can literally change with the weather, and needs all their IoT devices to draw from a single data pool.

The point is, get an IoT partner that can keep pace with your customers’ needs as they evolve.

Unexpected bills are like a slap in the face—painful, and to be avoided at all costs. And all the time you spend worrying about bill shock is time you can’t spend maximising your mobile revenue.

Make sure your provider can protect you from them, with data caps and usage alerts, or even better: tariffs that automatically adjust to your data usage.

Outages have a way of happening right when you need connectivity most. Make sure your provider can give you rock-solid protection against network outages. Multi-network SIMs that swap to the strongest networks automatically are a great example.

And if you’re using mobile as a Pre-Ethernet solution, your customers will enjoy even more resilience once you roll over the services into on-demand backup connectivity.

If you’ve got a roaming or Multi-network deployment, managing your SIMs can get complicated, fast. Different network operators have different platforms for monitoring your deployment.

But you can make it simple and seamless if your IoT provider has a strong SIM management portal that pulls them all together.

Don’t settle for the headache of having twenty different logins to remember, and twenty hoops to jump through just to check your data usage.

(Also, ask what training and knowledge base resources they offer. A good provider won’t leave you in the lurch.)

Your customers trust your services to be safe and secure—especially if they’re in sectors like education or healthcare, where they have strict regulations to comply with.

So make sure your IoT provider can keep your devices and connectivity safe. That means:

Sometimes, there are bumps in the road that are out of your control. Like device issues on launch day, or network failures at peak time.

You can’t predict disaster; but you can make sure your IoT provider’s support team has your back. Ask how their support team will help when you:

Need emergency connectivity, say during when a fixed-line installation fails and your customer needs to get online ASAP.

Struggle to get a device working, and need to troubleshoot on site.

Can’t identify what the problem is yourself and need an engineer to investigate.

Ideally you want 24 / 7 phone availability, web chat, support tickets, engineer visits; the more avenues of support, the better.

Picture this. You’ve just bought Connectivity-in-a-Box™ from your partner. It’s perfect, it’s exactly what your customer needs. Excited, you hop on the phone to them and tell them all about it…

… only to find your IoT provider has already snuck around you and made the sale to your customer. Talk about awkward.

So, our advice here is to check that your IoT provider is partner exclusive. That way, you’ll know they’re fully devoted to helping you connect your customers. And you’ll avoid any standoffs over who gets to sell which customer what.

If your IoT provider can’t answer these questions to your liking, keep shopping around. The mobile opportunity is too big to waste on a partnership that isn’t giving you everything you need.