5G is a unified way of communicating. Of course, 4G was also that, but with 5G you have a more reliable, more robust network that connects a lot of things, bringing ultra-low latency and a massive network capacity. This benefits our customers by enabling them to make even better data-driven decisions about their business.  

I look at 5G implementation as a three-step process. Step 1 is the rollout of 5G, which Tele2 is currently doing. Step 2 – roaming – is being implemented quickly and will mean you are no longer dependent on your own network operator anymore – you can have sensors with the same performance with all networks when you go abroad. Once we have these two steps completed, we’ll be on step 3: massive IoT.  

If we take the 5G proof-of-concept Tele2 IoT did with Speeron and Nordic Choice Hotels, they were able to instantly see the benefits of flexible mobile connectivity and the ability to deploy a lot of services on 5G. Going forward, they will connect everything from devices to people to buildings, as will other customers. With 5G, it doesn’t matter if we’re talking about a single car, an office building, or an entire city – a robust network with ultra-low latency and a huge capacity means reliability and stability, which opens up huge possibilities.  

Currently the hospitality industry is seeing that 5G improves the complete user experience. Take your average hotel guest – they’re spoiled by their own mobile phone, which usually has the best connectivity. When they walk into a hotel, though, they tend to get an inferior user experience. Being able to connect to 5G when you enter the hotel means a seamless user experience. 5G also benefits the back of the house, where sensors and devices allow for the optimization of everything from energy consumption to air quality. It’s ease of use on one side and since 5G is super reliable, it’s a great experience for both the front and the back of the house because everything has the possibility to be more seamlessly connected.  

Turning to private networks: a 5G private network will out-perform WiFi because WiFi is still using ‘send and receive’ methods, which are pretty old fashioned. Private networks will improve indoor performance, so it makes sense that it’s better to connect to a 5G Private network than to a WiFi network. You get lower latency, better coverage, and ease of use, and you can use the same device in your office as you use it out on the street, so it’s decomplicated, in a sense. 

To give you an example, if we look at an airport, they use normal cellular phones and mobile radios, and they have a lot of automation going on.  The service on WiFi fluctuates a lot – it might be working perfectly and then again, it might not. With 5G it’s always a stable service, which is crucial when you’re talking about automation, particularly in a setting like an airport.  

Those of us in the IoT world have long talked about things like a surgeon in New York City remotely performing brain surgery on a patient in Stockholm, or a rock being cut remotely in a mine in Northern Sweden by someone in Berlin. 5G means you can extract data from devices in a live environment, so for example four measurements per second is feasible and will start to open up the possibility for things like remote surgery or remote mining.  

5G contributes to mission critical services – or perhaps we could say mission critical communication. Either way, waiting four or five seconds to get your data is not optimal, so 5G is a gamechanger for a lot of industries: healthcare can more easily reach isolated patients and people who work in industries like mining can do their work from a safe distance.  

We’ve been talking about the amazing possibilities of IoT for a long time and while some are already a reality, the technology is finally here to make much of it an everyday reality. 5G will be the revolution in communication.  

 If you would like to learn more about the benefits of 5G and IoT, please get in touch. 

Arjen Zijlstra
Solution Consultant
Tele2 IoT

APIs (Application Programming Interface) might sound tough and maybe even fell like they’ll be a difficult and painful implementation, but the fact is that APIs are nothing new. Neither is IoT. Both can be simple to understand and the combination of APIs and IoT is something beautiful. Let me tell you why.

The development and management of APIs is crucial in the world of IoT. IoT is a complex market with many different agents/players, with each one responsible for a specific part of the value chain. Thanks to APIs each of these blocks can be easily integrated – if you have the knowledge.

Setting up APIs helps companies grow more quickly by integrating disparate systems. They allow all communications between the device and the rest of the ecosystem to be performed in an automated way: the devices are connected and communicate, and you can manage the entire lifecycle.

So, why should you care about APIs?

Most developers have come across APIs in their work, and if you do work with them, you already know how important they are. But for those who haven’t worked with them, the question might be, ‘What are APIs, why are they important – and why are they important to IoT?”

To put it simply, APIs are a set of requirements that determine how applications speak to one another. They’ve been around for years and if you have a computer or smartphone or tablet, it’s APIs that make is possible for information to be transferred between programs, such as copying and pasting from one application to another.

You should care about APIs because they allow you to automate things around your deployment and the platform itself. This means that you can forget about having to go into the platform and doing things to the subscriber base. Instead, you can automate things on your own backend or server or whatever you have on your side. Maybe you have your own web portal that you want to sell to your customers so they can do something, maybe you want it for your own platform where you already have automation, and you want to connect 2CONTROL (Cisco IoT Control Center). The APIs will make sure it works.

How can we add automation to your business?

When it comes to what is being automated it really depends on what the customer wants. One of our customers has their own web portal where they can steer subscribers to other networks. So, let’s say one operator goes down; they go to their platform and steer the subscriber to a different communication plan that doesn’t include that operator that went down – instead it goes on networks that are operational. This prevents dropped connections and removes the danger of not getting data you need, which is particularly important for mission critical solutions, such as healthcare, utilities, or banking, where it is vital that you don’t lose your connection.

Of course, it all depends on how you build the API – you can build it so that you just get a mail when something happens because maybe being off-line here and there isn’t really going to impact your IoT deployment. This would work, for example, if you’re just tracking vehicles – then a dropped connection won’t matter short term because your data will be saved on the device and will uploaded when you get back online.  Or maybe your APIs take some other action, such as changing the plan on 2CONTROL (Cisco IoT Control Center) when a particular event occurs.

A lot of IoT projects have a number of different suppliers, each with their own characteristics – and you might want to make them standardized, because the point of interaction between these different parts will be the API, which will put the devices in contact with the network, the gateways, etc. In this way, it will be possible to build new integrated solutions on the services offered by the service provider.

If a customer is used to using APIs it’s not a problem implementing them. If they want to start using them and don’t have any knowledge – which is often a big concern for customers and rightly so – they need to have a team internally develop and maintain the system or bring in consultants. This is because going into the portal and setting things up in a smart way and knowing how to do it is what takes some time and training. If we look at 2CONTROL, it can be challenging to understand how to set things up for optimal benefits, but with a bit of training it will go much more smoothly, and you will get the full benefits offered. We are here to guide our customers in this process.

If you’d like to learn more about 2CONTROL and APIs and how they can help your business, please get in touch.

Nauris Upitis
Senior Customer Engagement Manager
Tele2 IoT

I’m often asked why it is important to have a dedicated INOC (IoT Network Operations Center), as opposed to many other operators, who send their IoT customers to their regular NOC. If we’re talking about technical knowledge there isn’t a huge difference. But we’re not a network operations center in the traditional sense, as we don’t manage the network itself. Tele2 manages the network and gives us support in that area. At INOC, we are more a hybrid of technical support, network operations, and service operations. This means we have taken all aspects of these functions and created this department to meet the particular needs of our IoT customers. Why? Because their needs are often unique and out of the scope of regular NOC support, which focuses mostly on the home network. But because 90% of our customers are roaming outside of the home network, we need to be following how they’re doing in the roaming network and address challenges they may have.

The thing is, IoT is still a relatively new industry. When you call the regular service desk they will check the network, see that it is up and running, and that technically your devices should be working. We, on the other hand, will not stop there. In fact, checking the network is just the first step for us. Once we check that, we will investigate and even if it’s one device, we may reach out to our roaming partners or anyone else who can assist. We do this because many of our customers have mission-critical solutions and that one device may be a matter of life or death, so it needs to be up and running. And while healthcare or utilities are important, we know that for all our customers, their solution is mission critical, because the longer there is a problem, the more loss of time and money, so we see them all as vital.

Let’s break it down: we are technical support for our customers for incidents they report, such as something not working as they expect. More importantly, though, is that we are specifically monitoring our customers and their solutions – and we’re not just monitoring the network, but also how our customer’s solutions are behaving. This allows us to be proactive and address challenges right away, often before the customer even knows there is a problem. We have had many instances where we have sent an email alerting them to a problem hours before any calls came into the desk.

This is important, because as we know too many companies continue to fail in their IoT development. I think having a dedicated IoT business unit at Tele2 with a dedicated INOC is essential, because we are building the future and our customers need to have the support of a team that has IoT top of mind at all times.

I like to tell the story about the janitor at NASA. He may not have built the rockets or launched people into space, but his part was also important in reaching the end goal, so you can look at the Tele2 IoT Unit as made of up many different functions, but every function is focused on making sure our customers succeed with their IoT solutions and that all of us do everything we can to support our customers in their IoT journey.

This could mean something as simple as why a device is behaving in a certain way to why the device isn’t connecting to the network, why it isn’t sending the data it’s supposed to be sending, or why devices are down in Germany.  We get questions on nearly everything and it’s our job to make sure those questions are answered, those challenges are solved by investigating the issue, and that we do what need to be done to resolve them – and to resolve them quickly.

Basically, we have an overview of everything that is happening, which allows us to troubleshoot, although it’s often not a matter of fixing things. In many cases the problem is due to device failure or changes that were made by either the customer or someone else that others haven’t been made aware of.

For some of our larger customers, we check how their devices are doing, then aggregate the data for six weeks and calculate average activity compared with current activity. As soon as it goes above or beyond the threshold we have set and the patterns we have previously identified, we notify the customer immediately, let them know where something is happening, and address it right away.

In the future, especially when LTE-M and NB-IoT devices are more widely used, you’re going to see the battery drained really fast when the device goes crazy and starts signally all the time. This is exactly what you don’t want, because the whole point of having them is to have long battery life. Because we work solely with IoT we can see that behavior, look at the set criteria, and monitor them for the customer to see what the problem is.

Ultimately, when it comes to INOC, it’s important that the team knows and understands the technology, such as LTE-M, which is IoT specific, it is new, and it is opening up a lot of new use cases. In combination with 5G, a lot of things are happening and we’re in a fast-moving phase of IoT, so having that dedicated knowledge on the team is crucial. This means that if a customer has a challenge with a certain technology or solution for their devices, we can not only help them, but also apply that knowledge to the next customer facing challenges.

Matiss Gaidulis
Head of Technical Operations
Tele2 IoT

Historically, the development of cellular IoT applications has been based on the reuse of technologies for person-to-person communication. Modules were basically rebuilt mobile phones with some sensors attached, while networks were based on the available 2G technology. However, as things have developed and as IoT applications have grown and become critical for companies and even society, the development has changed. Now, modules are designed, and operators are using specific business models and rolling out network technologies exclusively for IoT. This makes perfect sense since the requirements are different from handsets and the scale is now huge. 

When selecting a SIM card, many application developers are not making educated choices. Most SIMs that are used in IoT applications are still following specifications developed for use in handsets. In handsets, the environment is well known, and it is relatively easy to exchange a worn-out SIM.  This is far from the case for an IoT application. The Premium Industrial SIM – created specifically for IoT, has been developed with features that make it suitable for most IoT use cases.  

Let’s see what some of those features are:  

Environmental conditions

Commercial-grade SIM cards are designed for use in cell phones, with the specifications designed for normal weather conditions, to last for a few years and to do that in an environment that is relatively well protected from dust, humidity, and vibrations.  

The Premium Industrial  SIM can withstand tougher environmental conditions. Temperature, vibrations, shock, salt, and corrosion are just some examples of environmental effects where the tolerance is higher.  

Longevity

How about longevity? This brings up the question of write and erase cycles, and the memory of the SIM card.  The memory can only guarantee a specific number of write and erase cycles. This  is a crucial factor when talking about devices  that are meant to last for many years, that change location (cells  and/or towers)  and sometimes  networks  (like a tracking service, etc.) It also matters if a device  needs to re-authenticate to  the  network regularly, or if  recurring  power-cycling of the device occurs. The Premium Industrial SIM is optimized to ensure longevity, with significantly more write and erase cycles compared to standard SIMs.  

Form Factor

The choice of form factor is often overlooked when designing the device. Obviously, there are size issues that stipulate how small the SIM needs to be, but there are some other things to consider.  

The most common form factors are the different plug-ins – 2FF, 3FF or 4FF, aka mini, micro, nano – which you likely know from your cell phone. Often these come in 3-in-1 versions that solve some logistical challenges regarding stocking up with multiple form factors. However, before using the multi form factors in a large-scale deployment, you should be aware that the cutting in the SIM cards for the multiple versions also reduces the durability of the SIM card. And there are differences in thickness for the 4FF, which complicates things further. To get the maximum endurance from a plug-in SIM, single form factor SIMs are recommended. 

The most durable form factor for IoT is embedded, also known as MFF2. These SIMs are not cards, i.e., they have no plastic holder but are instead a chip that you solder directly to your circuits. This removes the risk of the contacts being worn out or that the SIM is stolen. However, it is also more complex to embed the chip and makes it impossible to change SIM without changing the circuit board.  

Commercial lock-in effects

For long-lasting IoT applications, one of the biggest challenges is the long-term lock-in effect to the Connectivity Service Provider (CSP). This is especially true for embedded SIMs, but many applications are rarely touched and changing SIMs can be a very expensive project. To create an IoT application where the CSP may need to be replaced during the devices’ lifetime, GSMA has developed a standard called Remote SIM Provisioning or eSIM, where the data on the SIM can be exchanged securely over the air. When the device is to be long-lasting, it is recommended to have a SIM that fulfils this standard and where the CSP will allow such a change. 

What about Tele2 IoT?

We have re-developed our Premium Industrial SIM product that addresses these challenges and ensures a long-lasting IoT solution. This SIM fulfils the standards for environmental conditions and has special functionality to ensure a very high amount of write and erase cycles. As this SIM is built to last, we will also pre-package it with functionality for changing operators, as an insurance and more.

There is a lot to think about when choosing the ideal IoT solution.  Choosing the right  SIM is a big part of these choices, and we are here to help you. With Tele2 IoT’s Premium Industrial SIM, you will be sure that you have the endurance that you need from this critical component, as well as the ability to change operators, in case it would be necessary sometime in the future. 

Stay tuned for more news about our Premium Industrial SIM offering – or you can reach out for further discussions.  

Marcus Gidén
Commercial Product Manager
Tele2 IoT

We are putting your devices on the map with Location Based Services (LBS), bringing a new set of features to the platform. We have enabled new API and Automation features, and a new drill-down options in platform where you can get access to location history and see your device on Google Maps.

Since retiring 2DISCOVER, one of the features our customers request the most has been to enable location tracking in some way. We have since provided possibilities to integrate with customer RADIUS for location streaming, but not everyone has their own RADIUS. To solve this, we have developed in-house solutions more tailored to troubleshooting and we are now very happy to announce that we have adopted the add-on Location Based Services (LBS) in 2CONTROL (Cisco IoT Control Center.)

The add-on works by taking Cell-ID from signaling and matching it with a set of coordinates from opencellid.org, a database of crowdsourced location information. With that done, you are just a click away from viewing a device’s location on a map.

The challenging part of getting the service up and running was not to get the google maps API key working, or extracting and parsing out the data from opencellid.org, but to make sure that the data was mapped correctly in the system. To ensure this was a structured process, we split all the data on MCC MNC and ended up with a couple of thousand files to map. And because things change over time, we have also created a process for dealing with updates on a monthly basis.

So, what are the benefits of LBS?

You can detect if something that should not move is moving. You can integrate and use the API to analyze location data on a longer time span than 30 days, the limit of 2CONTROL. You can select which devices to track and which not to track, so you can stay compliant with privacy laws and regulations. All this can be done without any additional hardware or software for your device. Granted, it is not as accurate as a GPS, but it is also not as taxing on the battery.

If you would like to know more about LBS, please contact us for a free 30-day trial.

Marcus Gidén
Commercial Product Manager
Tele2 IoT

When it comes to IoT, you want to be able to use your devices globally. Your solution might be operating in many different areas of the world, or your company may be growing, and you want to ensure you are able to operate globally in the future. Having the right roaming agreements in place ensures that you will have the capabilities you need.  

At Tele2 IoT we are hard at work on increasing the LTE-M roaming footprint, together with the Tele2 roaming department, as well as other operators. But while LTE-M is available to our customers in some regions, it is not yet available everywhere. Why is that? The bottom line is that we want to make sure certain LTE-M features are functioning and approved by the different operators we have agreements with. For example, we are carefully testing power saving mode before launching in a market, because this is a key feature of LTE-M for our customers. We’re basically doing a sanity check on the roaming networks – we know a lot of our customers are very eager to use LTE-M and they want to use it in many different markets so rolling it out in a controlled way ensures that it works as it should and also that we don’t run into problems down the road – and that our customers don’t either. To put it another way, customers want the advantages of LPWA (low-power, wide area) technology, and we want to offer it to them.  

So, where are we today when it comes to LTE-M roaming agreements? We are already offering LTE-M across Sweden, and we have also rolled it out in five other roaming networks: Netherlands KPN, Netherlands Vodafone, US AT&T, Belgium Orange, and Switzerland Swisscom. We will be rolling out roaming agreements for LTE-M in a further ten markets this year.  During 2022, we are aiming to connect at least 25 new networks. This may go faster when we see global networks rolling out LTE-M and it becomes a natural part of our roaming partners’ mobile networks.  

What all this means to you is that, together with 5G, massive IoT is being enabled by LTE-M. It is part of the 5G standard and will be one of the pieces in the 5G puzzle and massive machine to machine communication.  

If you would like to learn more about how IoT technologies can help your business, please get in touch. 

When Tele2 launched 5G for IoT with Foodora’s autonomous delivery droid Doora in March, Stefan Trampus, Tele2’s Business Area Manager for B2B, said: “This is only the beginning for 5G and IoT. Now we want to see what more we can enable”. This got us all thinking about the many amazing opportunities ahead. 

With 5G we see much higher data streams much faster, the response rate is better, and that means better redundancy and enablement for real time services. CCTV is an obvious use case (with its high data streams), but also things like real time surgery, and autonomous vehicles, including, of course, Doora. 

Doora herself will soon deliver restaurant food, as well as groceries and other items to customers living near Stockholm’s Stureplan area, where 5G already works well. At the same time, 5G is being rolled out across Sweden at a fast pace, which is making both consumers and companies very happy that data speeds are increasing. Most companies are very interested in the data being generated, because that means, among other things, the predictiveness of machine behavior is greatly improved. Furthermore, with lots of data, AI can be used to take decisions – because the more data the owner has access to, the more those decisions are improved. 

IoT itself differs a bit from the 5G used on our mobile phones, where the benefits of having more data faster are obvious (the higher speed,  the better user experience and faster downloading). For the whole IoT use case though, and for the cases that are improved by 5G, there are settings that need to be put in place, because IoT communication has differences in technology compared to mobile communication. Tele2 IoT is proud to say that we now have the capabilities to do everything we could do with 4G using 5G for our customers’ devices through our roaming agreements.  

Back to the quote from Stefan Trampus; what more can we enable? We’re happy to talk to you about the possibilities 5G offers your IoT solution – please get in touch. 

I’m the connectivity management guy at Tele2 IoT, the one who knows a lot about Cisco IoT Control Center and how it helps you manage your connectivity, so I sit in on a lot of meetings with customers. And at those meetings I get a lot of questions.  The most common question I get?  “What is the difference between a rate plan and a communication plan?”

The baseline answer is that the communication plan tells you what a SIM card can do from a technical perspective, such as if your SIMs have access to data, SMS service, and also where they have access to which roaming networks. The rate plan, on the other hand, only tells you what the price is.

Of course, things can get more complicated and these two plans do interact. For example, you might have a rate plan with a good price in Price Zone A but it’s more expensive in the other zones. But you are using a communication plan that allows traffic in the whole world – in this situation you could end up with bill shock if your device leaves price Zone A. Why? Because the communication plan says you can do traffic anywhere in the world, while the rate plan won’t tell you whether you can do it or not, it will only tell you what it’s going to cost you.

How can you best optimize the use of rate plans and communication plans?

You should always have a communication plan that allows you to do some kind of cost control. Let’s look at geo-zone A, which will give you a few selected networks in each EU country with a good value for price. Other networks are available, but they are more expensive. These good value networks suit a lot of solutions that aren’t mission critical – you just need to make sure your devices can connect to the network when they cross borders or otherwise move around. Now, it’s not always easy to make sure you select the correct network to use, which is why you have the communication plan. The communication plan allows you to restrict access to only Prize Zone A, which will give you coverage in the EU, but you will only have the less expensive networks available.

On the other hand, if you have a communication plan that is open to all networks, your device doesn’t say ‘only use the less expensive network’ – instead it just picks one with a good enough signal strength, which means you could end up on a premium network in Price Zone B or even C, which can lead to some serious bill shock.

To put it in real terms, just say you have a truck that travels around Europe and just takes a network as it drives along. If you have an open communication plan it might include Zone A but then you drive through Serbia and boom! You will have a a high cost, because that’s Zone C and your SIMs grabbed a network due to your open communication plan. The bottom line is your communication plan should reflect your rate plan and vice versa – that’s how you maintain cost control in an efficient way.

If I’m looking for cost control, I should place limits, which means I might sometimes lose service on a moving device. If you don’t need continuous service this probably won’t matter. Most customers don’t have devices that support live streaming a road trip through Europe – your truck pinging every few hours will probably be enough, because even if you lose coverage for a period of time, the data will be cached and then sent when coverage resumes. It’s good to note, though, that if you’re in regions with few networks in the less expensive zones you may want to open up your communication plan a bit – it all comes down to your needs and matching them effectively and in the best, most cost-effective way possible

If I’m looking for the best possible service, such as for a mission critical solution, which could be in just say healthcare or security or public safety, then I will probably want to pay a more premium price for service. This is a needs-based decision.

If you’re unsure of how to work with your rate and communication plans, please get in touch. We are always ready to help our customers get the most from Cisco IoT Control Center.

Marcus Gidén
Product Manager
Tele2 IoT

Compared to the traditional SIM card, the eSIM is still relatively new*. The traditional SIM card is a tried and trusted technology that has long been an integral part of IoT connectivity. However, as the IoT market grows it brings new challenges, some where the solutions are limited by traditional SIM technology – and this is where the eSIM really shines. 

The eSIM is expected to be one of the key enablers for growth in the IoT market. By enabling the switch of the subscriber identity remotely, it solves many of IoT’s challenges: 

• Switching connectivity provider without physical access to the device
For plug-in SIMs the eSIM eliminates costly field work required to physically swap a SIM-card. For devices using embedded SIM cards, the eSIM is the only way of changing connectivity provider 

• Managing complex supply chains
If globally deployed IoT devices require different connectivity providers across different regions, using eSIM will allow for the same SKU for the entire production line. For devices deployed in markets where a local connectivity provider is needed, the subscriber identity can be changed to a local one remotely 

• Manage risk of permanent roaming regulations
If directives on permanent roaming are put into effect in a market where an IoT deployment already exists, the need to switch to a local connectivity provider becomes fact. If the deployment is done using eSIMs, the cost and effort to switch is greatly reduced.  

 • Reuse of subscription assets
An enterprise with an eSIM–based IoT deployment will over time acquire connectivity subscriptions in the form of virtual profiles from different connectivity service providers. As each virtual profile can be associated with a subscription period and fee, to optimize the utilization of this assets is of great interest. When using eSIM, a profile can be disabled on any one eSIM when it’s no longer needed, and later re-used by activating it on another eSIM 

Tele2 IoT’s eSIM based offering is twofold: we can provide you with the eSIM itself, including a pre-installed Tele2 IoT connectivity profile in our 2SWITCH insurance product. Or, we can provide only the Tele2 IoT connectivity profile itself in our 2SWITCH Virtual Profile product, which you can load onto your existing eSIM using a different Subscription Manager than Tele2 IoT’s. 

To learn more, please feel free to get in touch.

Christian Seglert
IoT Product Manager
Tele2 IoT

When talking to customers we get a lot of questions around connectivity, with one of the basic ones being, “Why can’t I just go down to my local retail shop, buy a bunch of SIMs, and plug them into my devices? It’s cheaper compared to what you’re offering!”

It’s a good question and a natural one if you’re new to the IoT game. This question rarely comes from customers that have deployed thousands of devices and maybe have a business model that requires control and overview. So, let’s clarify.

Why can’t I just buy connectivity from the local retail store, like I would do for my phone?

The simple answer is that you can buy connectivity just like you would for your phone and pop the SIMs into your devices. It’s more a matter of what you’re trying to do with your devices, how many you want to connect, the control you want to exert and how your business will develop.

If you have a very simple business model and you can easily access the devices, well then there are instances where retail shop connectivity could make sense. It is also a questions of volume: how many devices do you want to deploy? If you have low amounts of devices that will stay the same over time, a prepaid MBB (Mobile Broadband) might be the right solution for you.

On the other hand, with a professional IoT connectivity solution, you have a connectivity platform where you have life-cycle management.  You have control of when to activate and de-activate connectivity, you can automate your business, and it gives you control over your costs. Furthermore, with a professional IoT connectivity solution, you will have the help of a dedicated IoT support, instead of a traditional telco helpdesk, something that might be critical as your solution grows and becomes more complicated.

What role will roaming play in your solution?

Then we have the question of networks and roaming. If you don’t expect movement of your devices and you’re happy with the coverage the local operator provides in those instances, that might also support a retail shop connectivity case.

On the other hand, with a professional IoT connectivity business partner you have commercial options to upgrade and expand your coverage as well as to shift to different rate plans dynamically according to your data needs – all through self-service with an IoT connectivity platform.

At the heart of all this isn’t the issue of where you bought your connectivity, it’s what is the purpose of your connectivity. The solutions we offer from Tele2 IoT include but are not limited to:

• Connectivity management
• Business capabilities
• Analytics & reports
• Data usage rules & Roaming
• Security
• Automation & integration
• IoT support

You might not think you need any of the above and if that’s the case you need to ask yourself the most important question…

Why are you connecting your devices?

The whole point of IoT is to gain insights and visibility into your business so that you can achieve any number of goals, from improving productivity to streamlining processes to saving time and money. In order to do all of that and more, you need to not just connect your devices, but to also manage and control them.

That means that IoT connectivity gives you the ability for business rules capabilities, such as setting limits on things like data usage. You can set communication plans (which networks is my device allowed to connect to?), change rate plans (5MB or 500MB), and put limits on the number of SMS allowed. If someone tampers with the device and puts the SIM in something else, you can track that SIM and shut it down – or better yet, set a IMEI whitelist so it only works with your device.  You have analytics and reports that give you the deep insights you need to effectively use IoT to improve and grow your business. And if you need support you have a dedicated IoT operations team at your fingertips – imagine trying to call your cell phone operator’s support team and trying to get help with an IoT problem – not going to happen!

If a device isn’t working, you’re going to know about it. You’ll have a platform that in addition to providing valuable analytics, allows you to troubleshoot when something goes wrong.

With IoT connectivity from Tele2 IoT, you get a solution that delivers critical features to those who require them.

So, that’s connectivity. What about security?

The simplest answer is that IoT connectivity has a setup for delivering security from start.

Traditional retail connectivity doesn’t usually offer built in security solutions. Most often you have to ensure security through antiviruses, operating system security, and 3rd party VPNs.  With a professional IoT connectivity you have a range of access service options, from private APNs to VPN setup and even interconnect fixed lines, ensuring your data is secure. You also get the enhanced security that comes with two-factor authentication, user audit trail, IP authentication, and other measures, keeping you and your customers secure.

You also need to think about the future: as time goes on you connect more things, you buy more things, you throw old things away – who is managing subscriptions that you bought one, two, three years ago?

To learn more about how Tele2 IoT can enable your business, please get in touch.