The Internet of Things (IoT) has transformed industries worldwide, enabling seamless communication between devices and providing unparalleled opportunities for innovation and efficiency. Mission-critical applications demand uninterrupted service. Connectivity outages, delays, or data breaches can lead to significant risks, particularly in sectors like healthcare, where lives may depend on real-time data transmission. As the number of connected devices continues to grow—Berg Insight predicts 14.2% CAGR for remotely monitored patients, reaching 126.1 million by 2027—it becomes imperative to adopt robust IoT connectivity solutions..

For organizations with mission-critical applications, such as healthcare, and remote patient monitoring, selecting the right IoT connectivity solution is not just a decision—it is a necessity to ensure reliability, security, and scalability. Such organizations are strongly advised to consider using cellular connectivity from multiple providers to ensure redundancy and safeguard against service interruptions. At Tele2 IoT we are a trusted partner for organizations operating mission-critical IoT applications. As many of the world-renowned brands and European leaders in connected care rely on our services.

This blog explores 9 key considerations and best practices for choosing IoT connectivity for mission-critical applications, focusing on sustainable and future-proof solutions.

Comprehensive Guide to IoT Connectivity Deployment

To ensure the success of mission-critical IoT applications, it is essential to integrate key connectivity criteria with strategic deployment considerations. Below is a detailed and actionable guide to achieving robust and reliable IoT connectivity:

1. Reliability and Redundancy
   • A resilient network infrastructure is paramount for mission-critical applications. Implement redundancy by leveraging cellular connectivity from multiple providers to ensure continuous service even during outages.
   • Select providers that offer extended Service Level Agreements (SLAs), round-the-clock support, and transparent escalation protocols to mitigate risks effectively.
2. Security
   • Secure data transmission is crucial. Deploy private APNs and IPsec VPNs to protect sensitive information and ensure data integrity.
   • Use advanced SIM management platforms to establish thresholds, automation rules, and real-time alerts, enabling proactive monitoring and control of device behavior and data usage.
3. Scalability and Future-Proof Technology
   • Plan for growth by adopting flexible solutions like eUICC SIMs, which enable seamless profile switching and remote management for adaptability to evolving technologies.
   • Invest in technologies that support LTE-M and 5G while accommodating the phase-out of legacy standards like 2G and 3G to future-proof your IoT deployment.
4. Initial Setup and Testing
   • Begin with thorough testing using shared APNs for proof-of-concept validation and early-stage integration. Evaluate connectivity performance across LTE-M to 5G networks to identify the most suitable configuration for your use case.
   • Assess performance metrics and scalability needs during this phase to ensure alignment with long-term deployment objectives.
5. Deployment Setup and Design
   • Choose between public and private APNs based on your security and scalability requirements:
     • Public APN: Quick and easy to deploy but less adaptable for future upgrades or enhanced security needs.
     • Private APN: Offers a dedicated environment that is better suited for scaling and integrating additional services, such as IPsec VPNs or cloud interconnects.
   • Incorporate redundancy and flexible designs to accommodate future growth without extensive reconfiguration.
6. Automation and Device Management
   • Deploy automation rules within SIM management platforms to monitor data usage, enforce thresholds, and respond to anomalies promptly. Automation reduces operational overhead by minimizing repetitive tasks.
   • Maintain full visibility and control over devices through advanced management tools. Capabilities like remote activation or deactivation, data consumption tracking, and automated security protocols enhance efficiency and reliability.
7. Redundancy Planning
   • Collaborate with your IoT provider to integrate multi-operator connectivity into your strategy. This approach ensures resilience against disruptions and optimizes service continuity for mission-critical applications.
8. Regulatory and Market Trends
   • Stay informed about IoT industry regulations and best practices, such as those outlined by GSMA, to ensure compliance with global standards.
   • Understand market dynamics and customer demands to anticipate necessary upgrades and maintain competitive advantage.
9. Internal alignment
   • To ensure the success of mission-critical IoT applications, it is essential to integrate key connectivity criteria with strategic deployment considerations. This could be done only in close collaboration with your connectivity provider, making sure that you solution is safe and future-proof.
   • As a provider of mission critical services, leveraging advanced monitoring tools and incorporating multi-operator solutions is imperative to achieving the smooth an uninterrupted service.

Conclusion

Choosing the right IoT connectivity for mission-critical applications is a multifaceted process that demands attention to reliability, security, scalability, and regulatory compliance. By collaborating with a trusted partner like Tele2 IoT, organizations can confidently navigate the complexities of IoT deployment, ensuring their solutions are robust, adaptable, and future-ready.

Let’s build a connected world of limitless possibilities together. Contact us to start your IoT journey today.

When you have devices that will move between different countries, it’s vital that you are able to keep them always connected. This is where IoT roaming is crucial.

IoT roaming is a specialized connectivity solution designed for IoT devices. IoT roaming allows devices to function globally, giving you access to multiple networks across different regions or countries, allowing for uninterrupted, continuous network connectivity.

When it comes to your IoT solution, you want to ensure that your devices will stay connected when moving either within a country or between different countries – and that’s what you get with IoT roaming.

This is particularly important for global businesses, logistics (or any mobile solution), and supply chains that require real-time tracking of assets and data.

How does IoT roaming work?

IoT roaming is similar to roaming on your mobile phone but is instead intended for IoT devices. It functions through pre-defined partnerships and roaming agreements with Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) across the globe, and these agreements allow IoT devices to connect with other networks when they move beyond their home network’s coverage area. IoT roaming does this using one SIM card, along with regular network technologies and services, and IoT-specific technologies such as LTE-M and NB-IoT.

Each of these technologies are tested specifically before they are launched and made available to IoT customers. The availability is defined from the visited networks perspective, meaning if the network does not support VoLTE the device has no possibility to use this technology.

The Multi-International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) SIM card is a key component when it comes to IoT roaming. The IMSI SIM allows users to access multiple networks in different geographical locations. And unlike traditional SIM cards, multi-IMSI SIMs can host several IMSIs, each corresponding to a specific MNO’s network connection. This allows devices to switch between networks automatically, without manual configuration.

Benefits of IoT roaming

IoT roaming brings a host of benefits to your IoT solution, particularly if you have a global and/or mobile deployment, including:

• Streamlined global deployments

IoT roaming enhances and simplifies the deployment of IoT devices across regions and borders. By automatically connecting to the best available network, you can reduce the complexities associated with global deployments and management of them.

• Global coverage

IoT roaming allows your devices to maintain communication and data transfer capabilities, no matter where your devices are deployed. This global coverage ensures that your devices will not experience connectivity gaps.

• Reduced costs & complexity

Utilizing a single SIM card for multiple network connections can consolidate costs, particularly when it comes to data plans. IoT roaming also removes the need for manual network configuration, streamlining your deployment.

• Reliability & redundancy

Multi-IMSI SIM cards provide backup connectivity options, which are used when a network is not available or when the devices is outside its home network coverage area, giving better reliability and redundancy.

IoT roaming challenges… and solutions

Any technical solution will have its challenges, and IoT roaming is no different. Here are some you may face and how to address them:

• Latency

IoT roaming can introduce latency, mainly because of the need to backhaul data to the home network. A higher network latency will require more power for transmitting data, leading to increased power consumption and reduced battery life. Consider this potential issue when planning your global IoT deployment, particularly for latency-sensitive applications, such as healthcare monitoring or smart home security systems. Ensure that you use the best technology and components available to minimize challenges as much as possible. Also, 5G promises to deliver faster speeds, lower latency, and greater capacity than existing networks, which will be essential for supporting the growing number of IoT devices.

• Costs

Fees around data transmission – aka roaming charges – are most likely to be more costly when compared to localized IoT deployments, similar to the situation when you use your phone as a consumer. Your connectivity provider has to make special agreements with other network providers to allow you to use their networks. The cost in these agreements can differ quite a lot from region to region, and even within a region.

Many operators provide a Connectivity Management Platform (CMP) to oversee your cellular connections. These should offer smart automation rules and functionality that help you keep connectivity costs under control during the device life cycle.

• Regulations and roaming restrictions

Regulatory complexity continues to hamper IoT deployments in some countries, where local rules like data residency, data sovereignty, and roaming restrictions can create barriers.

Some countries have strict regulations and may prohibit permanent roaming, while other countries will block the device when it has been in a country longer then allowed. The main reason for these restrictions is to promote the domestic IoT industry and safeguard local interests.

To address this problem, you can either partner with a local supplier or find a connectivity provider that has done so. For enterprises requiring direct integration with local MNOs to maintain connectivity, this process can be both financially burdensome and time intensive.

IoT roaming is an area that we know has a big impact on your business both from a cost and a strategic perspective, so please feel free to get in touch to discuss this further.

To the naked eye, there isn’t much difference between consumer and IoT/M2M SIMs. The SIM in your mobile phone looks pretty much like the SIM in an IoT device, but there are critical differences. Your phone SIM is a commercial UICC plug-in, while an IoT device that is enabled to remotely manage subscriptions and has space for a removeable SIM is using an eUICC plug-in SIM. So, while they may look the same, the capabilities of eUICC SIMs are revolutionary for the IoT market- and the most secure eUICC formfactor on the IoT market today is the embedded SIM.

Let’s look at the different layers of an eUICC SIM and how those layers need to match in order for the SIM to work.

How are the layers linked together?

The hardware Operating System (OS) and electrical profile work like a minicomputer, with the different layers needing to be compatible for the SIM to function correctly. Not just any OS with work with any hardware, though, and it’s the hardware and OS compatability that decides if a SIM can support eUICC functionality.

This means there is no need to physically change the SIM – you can switch between different profiles in the same MNO, or from one MNO profile to a different MNO profile.

The Operating System

In addition to matching with the hardware, the OS supports important features on the SIM. If there is a PIN active on the SIM, the PIN handling is in the OS, as are authentication, access, and management of files and data, along with loading and deleting applications. Encryption/decryption and tamper proof functions are also handled in the OS.

One eUICC profile, many MNO profiles

An eUICC SIM has one eUICC profile but can store multiple MNO profiles, although only one MNO profile will be enabled at a time. So, what are these profiles?

The Tele2 (MNO) profile and eUICC profile are personalizations of the SIM. They contain network keys and subscription identifiers (IMSI, ICCID, authentications keys.) The Tele2 profile can either be personalized when the SIM is produced in the factory, or it can be downloaded later through SM-DP (Data Preparation)/SM-SR (Secure Routing).

The task could be implementing the business logic to change a connectivity profile based on rules, such as when one network is not available and you want the next best available one.

If the SIM has a local applet, this is stored in the Tele2/MNO profile. If it’s a global profile it will be in the eUICC profile. To provide interoperability applets are typically developed in JAVA.

Today Tele2 IoT has an applet that clears forbidden networks, and in 2024 local management and management of 5G stand-alone on eUICC will be launched.

What is unique in an eUICC SIM?

Every eUICC SIM has an EID (eUICC identifier) which is the administrational key in the hardware layer. If there is an MNO profile change the SIM will have a different ICCID and IMSI, but once the eUICC SIM is produced its EID is never changed.

The EID contains 32 digits compared to the ICCID’s 20. There is a shortened version of the EID printed on both the embedded and plug in eUICC chip. The EID is provisioned in the SM-SR, which is also responsible for managing the status of profiles on the eUICC.

Hardware and formfactors

When using a SIM that has eUICC capabilities it is important that the hardware is robust and long lasting. ETSI has a classification of the different environmental properties in which the SIM is graded.

On a SIM technical sheet, the environmental performance can be represented in a string, together with which version of ETSI specification was used. The string of letters can then be looked up to understand what the SIM can withstand.

For example, the environmental property temperature has the grades TS, TA, TB, and TC. The Premium industrial SIM is graded as TB in its ETSI, string while a commercial SIM is graded TS. The eUICC Premium Industrial SIM can be stored and operational in the temperature range of -40 °C to + 105 °C ,while the UICC commercial SIM can only be used in the temperature range of -25 °C to + 85 °C

As mentioned before there are two types of SIM cards: plug-in formfactors (2FF, 3FF, 4FF) that are removable, and embedded formfactors that are soldered into the device. The most popular embedded SIM on the IoT market is the MFF2 (M2M Form Factor).

As the abbreviation applies the MFF2 SIM is designed for M2M/IoT use cases and is delivered on what looks like an old film reel. It is one of the most secure chips due to being soldered into the device and the device can be designed in a way that makes it more robust in general. An embedded SIM is also a greener alternative to plug-in SIMs, with less plastic and metal per SIM.

If you would like to know more about our SIMs and eUICC functionality, please feel free to reach out to the Tele2 IoT team.