How we built it: Roaming data for over 100 planes | IoT Insider Podcast Episode 25

Dan Cunliffe
Hi, everyone, and welcome to the IoT Insider Podcast. My name is Dan Cunliffe, and I’m Managing Director of Pangea. And today I’m once again joined by my good friend and Sales Director, Bernie McPhillips. Welcome, Bernie.

Bernie McPhillips
Hey, Dan, thanks for having me, the friend bit never gets old. I think we said that quite recently and a few other things as well. And delighted to be here with you once again, in what I believe is quite an important podcast is that right?

Dan Cunliffe
It is a very important podcast, and to the millions of listeners out there, obviously, this is our 25th podcast. Today, we’ve got a pretty interesting idea and place we’re going to talk about we’re going to get into a market that’s been to put it lightly. The travel industry, the airline industry has been pretty decimated through COVID. But Pangea was to the rescue, you know, this particular project, which needed all, almost all of our intelligent capability to successfully deliver this for our partner, is actually just an interesting way in which we partner as well. So, you know, many of the those those who listen to the podcast regularly, will know that, you know, we’ve got quite a keen interest in how we partner, and how we bring people into that partnership. But actually, we have four key types of partners. So if you’re a new listener, or you you kind of you know, maybe you’re one of our partners, we tend to work with what we call Telecoms Resellers. We would work with Internet Service Providers, Managed Service Providers is number three. And then the fourth option for us is our IoT Solution Providers. A telecoms reseller, ISP, an MSP can be similar ish. In terms of the way they deliver, there’s quite a bit of kind of internet focused or network focuse, or deployment focus. On the IoT Solution Provider side, it’s a little bit more specific. For example, in this case study we’re going to discuss now for an international airline delivery, the partner provides a specific device that needs to be connected in a specific way. And when they came to us, and wanted to talk about it, I think, you know, the real headline was, what happens when I’ve got planes flying all over the world landing in 75 different countries? How are you going to help me connect them not only cost effectively, but qualitatively, as well, it is such a word, the ability to make sure I can get a connection, because today, people don’t quite understand, you know, when Bernie and I fly normal class as we do, because we’re obviously very prudent. We do like to order a gin and tonic after all the business is done. And what happens is the is the man comes around, or the lady comes around and says, Can I please have your card, you pay on the aeroplane, but generally, the transaction doesn’t actually happen at that point. It generally happens once you land. And what they do is they take a hold of your credit card details, and then send the information securely to your server, process and be able to take the money from your bank account. However, this was one of the big challenges for this customer. And they were particularly struggling with the ability to have a consistent and sort of, you know, confident method to connect across many countries when people got off the plane so that they could upload and process these card payments. I’m kind of passing over to Bernie a little bit here, I’ve only just sort of whet your appetite about it. But Bernie, maybe you want to take us into the details of the project?

Bernie McPhillips
Yeah, sure. Yeah, thank you for that. You know, thanks for that kind of segue. Intelligent mobile data is so important in this particular instance, because a mobile broadband SIM would simply be allowed to roam internationally, pick up any network that was available to it. And you wouldn’t really know what that SIM was doing for at least several days. There’s a mechanism for billing, which many of our wholesale partners will be familiar with called CDRs, Call Data Records, they typically can take three to four days to land if they’ve been delivered to you from an international network. And then worst case is, if it’s not being procured on a wholesale level, is that you wouldn’t really know what that SIMs done until you get your invoice. And when you consider how data hungry devices can be, then that’s not really a position that anybody would want to be in, very expensive networks, potentially quite accessible data bandwidth applications. So it’s important to give resilience. So regardless of what airport that particular craft was landing in, that there were networks available to it and multiple networks and better. There could be a local network outage. And when you consider the geography that an airport can cover many square kilometres, there won’t even be consistent coverage across that airport. So we always say no single network has perfect coverage, right. So even across that airport, potentially runway to runway, there could be fluctuations in coverage. And across one part of the airport, you’ll be better off on one network and across the other as you kind of get into that even crazy position where depending on what, what runway, a planes coming in on, what network should it be connected to. So what we were able to do in partnership with our particular partner is look at the countries that these airlines fly to. And then we can limit the intelligent mobile data solution to only connect in those countries. So you’re not going to be at risk of flying somewhere that could be unregulated. We know that there are some particular countries when you head west, where you can see charges of many 1000s of pounds per GB, and even some places when you head east, but I think the most expensive I’ve seen was nearly £200,000 per GB in one particular country, so nobody wants to be subjected to those kind of charges unexpectedly. So we limit the SIM, the intelligent mobile data solution to only connect in the countries where the airline flies to. So lots of control there, then we start to look at the network’s within those countries. And we can either based on the client’s particular budget, or we make recommendations back to the partner and say, look in this particular country, you’ve got four networks available. These three networks here between them, you’re going to get 98% geography. But this fourth one won’t really enhance much by way of capability was doubling the cost in that country, what do you think? And we can just take that particular network out if we wish, and allow the partner and client to stay within a particular budget without really doing much from the resilience point of view. So there’s always two three networks available in every single country but you can pluck out the most expensive ones. Then from a tariff point of view, lots of options, not just when we’re presenting to airlines but this is right across our portfolio and all the different verticals we sell to, we can offer you a single SIM that will have its own allowance and operate independently. Or we can pool data across a large number of SIMs. And we also have our unique Instanet product, which is an automated self optimising tariff. So if you think there’s going to be fluctuations in usage based on seasonality, or based on some devices using more data than others, etc, then every SIM will just move up and down in pre agreed tiers based on its usage.

Dan Cunliffe
I think something that’s maybe overlooked in this situation is your operations team doesn’t have to do anything. Your billing team doesn’t have to do anything this happens by itself. We agree, and we automate the tariffs for you daily, but we always optimise them on cost. So you never feel like oh, do I need to check something because maybe I can improve the way I go, this is done for you. That’s the sort of set and forget model, which is really nice.

Bernie McPhillips
Yeah, it really is it really. I mentioned before intelligent device pairing, so we can lock a SIM to a device. So the SIMs are actually paired with the devices, they can’t be taken out and put in maybe a user’s own device, or iPad and that type of thing, and potentially misused and use lots of data in an expensive country on an expensive network. So we can help to control those costs, too. So lots of that, that’s what a lot of it is about, is about control and avoiding anything unexpected happening. And our partner’s able to see all of this through the Pangea portal, see all of their services in real time. Look at the usage, set alerts, usage notifications, pull reports for historic usage and see exactly what’s happening right across their fleet. We’ve now rolled out to a number of airlines, indeed, some of the biggest in the world. And our partner’s absolutely delighted and in all of the time that we’ve worked with them and rolled out to these airlines, which is over three years, I’m really proud to say there’s only been one support call that was made in all of that time. And that’s just something that just needed a slight tweak on the network kind of thing around performance, but they just believe it’s so light touch for them. It just works. This is the kind of language that they use when they’re talking to us and why they continue to reiterate why they continue to partner with Pangea. Prior to working with Pangea, this partner and I would imagine, indeed, many others, they sold their solution without connectivity, because they feared it would add too much complexity. They’d need to recruit a higher number of support people. So they’re delighted now this is extra revenue, this is extra margin. And now they feel they own the whole solution. Whereas previously if they’d sold a solution without a SIM, and had there been a particular problem, would have been well can you phone, your mobile network operator find out there’s a problem there. If you didn’t provide the handsets you know contact your handset manufacturer there might be a problem there. Now the partner feels like they own the whole solution. The device, the platform, the managed service, the software, the back end. And now the intelligent mobile data part of the application as well. So it’s provided a real turn key solution for the customer, for just one, just one support call in three years, which I think is simply incredible when you roll it up literally 1000s of devices. And here’s the other thing that Daniel, you mentioned about the payment terminals and how you’re processing those payments, when the planes are coming down, that kind of thing. These devices are now becoming way more capable, and they’re actually going to be used for much more going forward. So I understand now the cabin crew members are going to have a device each rather than devices assigned to a particular aircraft, because those that device will then be taken off the flight with that crew member, they’ll take it with them, and if they’ve got an overnight stays on long haul flights, that type of thing. That crew member is contactable. So it’s an important part of things around that kind of thing like their well being. With everything that’s going on in the world. Over the last couple of years, there’ll be very simple to push out notifications to crew members and staff if there were anything to do maybe further with the pandemic, or any civil unrest, or war or acts of terror, that these people can be notified and kept safe told what to do in those particular instances or where to get to or that help is on the way, that kind of thing. So a real duty of care to the employees. And that can be done on these devices as well. And there’s lots around compliance computer based training, hygiene standards, because these people are often handling food and refreshments and that type of thing. New legislation comes out, these things can just be pushed out onto the devices now. So they’re now being seen as intelligent devices, not just payment terminals. So we’re able to offer lots of future proofing, that if the applications that are being deployed on them need more and more and more data in the future, we can handle that we can just flex that contract up for them as it needs in the future.

Dan Cunliffe
100% and I think that’s one of the reasons why, you know, if I just touch on just briefly, one of the reasons why it was you know, and has been such a successful story around the support function is because we’ve spent so much time analysing, discussing, and in the end agreeing with the partner, and the end customer about what they actually want. And I think if you put the time in the beginning, you really reap the rewards over the rest of the contract. I think that’s important for any of our partners listening to this. And that, you know, no matter the complexity, or the kind of question around like, you know, why do I need intelligent mobile data or intelligent services on my cellular estate? It just comes into its own when it looks at things like the support the after sales mentality, where quite often we don’t think about that, right? We just think about cool lets just get the deal in, lets just get it done. But actually, if we spend the time in the beginning really understanding what are those little bits and sweetening of the deals that we can do the value added services, that’s going to stand you as one of our partners in good stead going forward. So there’s always a good reason to bring any sort of mobile data or cellular service to one of our account managers to have a look at for you. Because you may be able to actually turn the deal into something that is either going to be longer term, maybe you can increase the contract value. But in my view, the most important is deliver the right service all the way through. And that’s what we can bring, even for standard mobile broadband solutions, we can take it to that next level.

Bernie McPhillips
Yeah, that’s absolutely right Dan, and I just want to reiterate that the capability that we’ve discussed at the start, and throughout the podcast is applicable to any particular vertical, we didn’t want to come on today, and talk to you specifically about airlines for everyone to go out and try and find airline opportunities. We know that’s not necessarily the smartest thing to do, but it’s just if we can understand intelligent mobile data, and how can we apply it in any given scenario, then about the things that we’ve talked about the controls, and even if the service is just to be deployed in the UK, Multi-net over single-net, static IP at network level where needed, lots of control, real time management alerts, usage notifications, locking the SIM to the device, content filtering where needed and applicable. All of these things you’re not going to get on a mobile broadband SIM. And that’s before the SIM even leaves our shores. Once you go international, the benefits of intelligent mobile data, are tenfold. The controls are needed way more than ever before, the enhancements that we can make mean more than ever before. For certain websites that you’d definitely want to block whilst abroad, content filtering comes into play. If you need to take the most expensive networks out of certain scenarios to stay within budget, add networks in where extra resilience is needed. Just things that you’re not going to get from a standard SIM. Not all SIMs are created equal, intelligent mobile data is is definitely the way forward.

Dan Cunliffe
Well, look, I sincerely hoping everybody kind of enjoyed a bit of that. It’s one of the nicer podcasts to do where we can just talk about some of the capability, apply it to a real world, fairly large problem that you know, particularly this vertical around, you know, needs that level of intelligence across so many different territories. But yeah, hope you guys enjoyed it. Look at ways in which you can apply it to existing customers, what do you really have to kind of lose to think about? Well, what if intelligence in my deployment could make a difference? We’re no more than a phone call, an email, you know, like on this podcast away if you want to get in touch. Which brings me to a close, you know, thank you very much for listening, do head over to our website for more on IoT podcasts and blog content. For more real life examples on how IoT looks in action. Do check out our case studies page, it’s on the website under the insights tab. And if you’ve got a really tricky connectivity project on your hands, or even if you want to see, can I turn my current deal into something more intelligent because I want to keep this customer happy for longer? Get in touch. We’d really, really appreciate it. My thanks goes to Bernie McPhillips, our Sales Director.

Bernie McPhillips
Thanks, Daniel. Always a pleasure. I look forward to the next one number 26.

Dan Cunliffe
Number 26. That’s where we’re going next. And to all the listeners once again, thanks so much. We appreciate your support. And we will speak to you next time. Have a good one.