Why Multi-Network SIM is a Game Changer for IoT
Full Podcast Transcript
Ryan Chacon: Welcome, Alex, to IoT for All Podcast. Thanks for being here this week.
Alex Kotler: Pleasure, pleasure. Thank you for having me.
RC: Absolutely. To kick things off, it'd be great, maybe, if you could just give a quick introduction about yourself and the company to our audience.
AK: So, I'm Alex Kotler. I'm SVP for sales and partnerships. I handle the sales and partnership agreements in North America. Our company is POND IoT. We specialize in multi-network connectivity, whereas our SIM card connects to every network across the world.
RC: I know several audiences, earlier stage into the IoT space, and there's a lot of people who have been here for a while, but break down what multi-network SIMs are, what it means. Why has it been such a game changer for the IoT landscape?
AK: So, a multi-network SIM is essentially exactly what it is. It's a SIM card that connects to multiple MNOs. So, like, an MNO is a mobile network operator, such as your AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon. Every carrier has pretty strong coverage at this point, but every carrier still experiences dead zones for one reason or another, whether a tower operates at a particular frequency that doesn't have a strong building penetration, or whatever the case may be. I mean, there are a number of different cases. And when you do a deployment, it's very difficult to understand which carrier works in a particular area. So, when you put up a carrier map, it says “Oh yeah, look, I'm in New Jersey and I'm in this particular city and I have great coverage”, but then, when you actually go there with your device, with the SIM activated, you see there's no coverage. And, at the end of the day, there could be a number of issues for that. One - the tower is down, or B - there's just no service in that particular block. Having a SIM card with access to multiple networks allows you to gain connectivity as long as there is cellular coverage from any of the providers. So, this significantly reduces dead zones. It doesn't eliminate them, you're still going to have them, but it significantly reduces them, which enables you a smoother deployment and a more cost-effective deployment.
RC: How does that change or how what I guess what are the challenges that kind of come about when you're going from let's say US to Canada or Mexico, which I know are areas you operate in, what are those cross-border challenges that a customer may face and how does what you all do simplify international deployments to make them more efficient and just reliable?
AK: Some operators, they enable what's called roam steering. Where they would force your connection to go to the least cost routing. On our end, what we do is we enable the customer to make the decision which network they will connect to. We allow the device to make the decision. We give completely wide open access to whichever, of course, that they want to connect to. The Canadian-US border specifically, at least in the Northeast, is challenging because when you get to the border, the device does not know which carrier to connect. You're kind of, at that point, you're really stuck in limbo, because it doesn't know, should I connect to the US carrier to a Canadian carrier? You're experiencing that challenge, having access, having the ability to scan for all the networks that are available in the area, manually lock it down eliminates that challenge that the device is experiencing, trying to make a decision which carrier to do.
RC: Historically, I'm sure companies were relying on single network providers in certain industries, certain use cases, and switching to multi-network SIMs obviously brings a whole ton of benefits. But what are some of the, maybe, challenges a business might face when going from relying on a single network provider, switching over to Multi-Network SIM, and what are those vulnerabilities that they might come across if they transition, or is it much smoother than maybe I'm articulating here.
AK: It depends on who the multi-network provider is. So, in our case specifically, most mainstream devices you would put in our SIM card and it would just work. That said, a Multi-Network SIM typically requires, not typically, it always requires you to put in the APN and enable data roaming, which is an extra step that consumers are not used to by going with a traditional carrier.
RC: So, I wanted to ask you also just about some general use cases. And I know some of that we're talking about before, we jumped on here. We're around ATMs, vending machines, EV charging stations, things that people might not always think about being connected, but are popping up more and more every day. So, if we look at ATMs and just kind of start there. Why is reliable connectivity such a critical factor in their operation? And how do Multi-Network SIMs really solve any common pain points that you might have heard about from customers prior to working with them?
AK: One thing is you go with any carrier. You have a single carrier, you make a deployment, you do a truck roll, you install the ATM, and it turns out that the carrier happens to have a dead zone. So, now what do you do? You either drive around with a stack of SIMs, and you activate all three of them and you start popping in one after the other to see which one works. With a Multi-Carrier SIM, it's just simple. Then on the flip side, with a Multi-Carrier SIM, it's very easy to have redundancy. Every carrier experiences network issues. So, if one of these carriers have a network issue, you have the ability to switch to another one. And you're eliminating downtime, because, at the end of the day, if that ATM machine doesn't have internet connectivity, it's offline. Nobody's making money, and nobody's taking money.
RC: With an ATM, I mean, I imagine they kind of stay in the same location for a decent amount of time. Is that pretty accurate? So, it's just figuring out what's going to give you the best connectivity in that location, and then you're kind of good to go from there?
AK: Yes, but then you also want to think of redundancy. Some ATMs, they'll use Ethernet and cellular failover. Some will just use a cellular failover. But again, having a single network, while unlikely, it does happen that networks go down. That's why having a Multi-Network SIM substantially reduces the possibility of downtime.
RC: Now, regarding vending machines. I don't think many people really realize how much technology really goes into them at times. Can you walk us through how IoT and connectivity are really playing a role there, transforming, kind of maybe, what we thought we knew about vending machines to, maybe now, the connected vending machine that is out there in the market?
AK: So, the vending machine world is evolving very quickly, especially with the introduction of AI. You take a traditional vending machine, and basic credit card reader, that would use maybe 25, 30 megabytes a month. And all it does is just process the transaction. The newer vending machines, they're a lot more robust. And they have very different data demands. One, they give you a full suite of analytics. They do face recognition and learn customers' behavior. So, now moving from a vending machine that had a basic requirement of 25 megabytes a month, where latency was absolutely irrelevant for the most part, as long as it's under like 200 milliseconds, and network conditions were absolutely irrelevant, to now, where you're using a vending machine where could use 3 to 5 gigabytes of data, having a robust, stable network is crucial to the operation of that vending machine. And this also goes to unattended retail, because unattended retail is essentially, is a giant vending machine.
RC: You're talking about like those kind of the employee-less shops. Like, I've been to sporting events, right? Where you just walk in, you scan your phone or credit card, and you walk in, and you just leave. Like there's nobody there to help you.
AK: Right. And again, you know, your connectivity goes down, you're out of business.
RC: It's so interesting how that had shifted. And, you know, I'm sure there's a lot of benefits of running on operation that way. But to your point, you're relying heavily on that connectivity. And without it, you can't do any business. And there's no really in between at that point. So, the other point I mentioned earlier is around EV charging stations. So, talk to me about the connectivity and how it plays a role there and why it's also, probably pretty unique, especially in remote, and maybe even like semi-urban kind of locations and areas. So, just generally take us through how that's playing a role, and what you kind of learn in that space as well.
AK: What we're seeing is very large amount of deployments in the EV charger space. I figured, you know, Tesla owns the infrastructure, and then you have a few other major players that are rolling out chargers here, and there. But what we're seeing, especially I want to say in the last six months, is very significant EV
charger rollouts across the country. I'm talking about like tens of thousands of EV chargers that are going up online on a monthly basis. The challenge with these is, again, connectivity, because without having internet access, these things simply do not work. And the way the incentives work for the EV chargers, at least today, is you have to have a certain amount of uptime in order to receive these incentives. So, having as much redundancies in place as possible plays a significant benefit to the EV charging operator as much as possible, because one, it's a user experience. So, they put up a brand new network. They have the app, and the user needs to know that the charger is online. How does that happen over the internet? The operator needs to know: How much juice is being used? How often is this charger being used? What is my ROI? That all comes down to connectivity. Truck rolls are very expensive. Truck rolls to service these machines range anywhere from $500 to $1,000 per roll. So, spending an extra $3, $5, $15 a month is a negligible expense.
RC: When we think about connectivity, we're not always, we're always, you know, these conversations that pass, it's always talked about in the sense of how it's baked into the solutions, the hardware, it's, you know, it's just something you just expect to work. But when you start to bring out the actual financial side of it and the ROI of like, look, if you choosing to spend money or not, it's almost non-negotiable at this point. Spending money on connectivity is so important, because look at the financial loss. If the shop is not able to be open, or in this case, you're having to send trucks out and, you know, monitor and kind of view things. Once you put it in that way, you kind of really start to see the power of why connectivity is so important to get right for any type of IoT deployment.
AK: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And especially like in rural areas where you may have only one carrier that works, but then sometime goes by, and another carrier puts up a new tower, which makes your signal stronger and better. And you have community, you have flexibility to control that. In my opinion, for these businesses, this is vital.
RC: Let me ask, when you work with businesses, obviously, I'm sure the answer is probably it depends on things, but like the use case, the environment. But the size of business that you work with, the size of the deployment, how does that all kind of affect the needs that a business or that the, you know, that you kind of, I guess, analyze when working with a customer to figure out what's the right connectivity solution for them? Like, do startups, is it size of the company? Is it more use cases? Is it size of deployment? Is it the environment? I'm sure it's a combination of all these things, but like, what's one of the really factors that matter that help kind of dictate which route you're going to go when it comes to finding the right connectivity for a company?
AK: It's a great question. And yes, 100%, it depends. That's the question that we try to put out there to the end user. It's what do you value more stability or price. I want to say sometimes shocking, as to how many people go off with price, and then, you know, you flip it on them, and you say, well the product that you provide to your end users what is your value proposition: is it price is it quality of service? Oh, no, no, we don't eat on price, it's always quality of service. Okay. So, now that we established that, in order for you to provide this quality of service, perhaps spending an extra dollar or two. And again, you know, the cost difference is so negligible. And yes, at scale, it 100% adds up, you know, 5 here, 10 cents there, it adds up. But then it could be counterintuitive to somebody's model, if they, is exclusively on price. Because, when the network goes down, not if, when, everyone's going to have outages. You want to have the support in place to get you back up and running quickly without having to jump from hoops. And as great as AI is, and I love AI, everybody that knows me, I utilize AI everywhere. It's not as good as that human connection and that human connection infrastructure costs money. We try to always position to our customers that we do have 24/7 live support. When something goes down, you can call somebody.
RC: Where do you see the future of Multi-Network SIM technology heading, let's say, three to five years from now? Are we moving towards more seamless and autonomous connectivity models? What's the next stage here?
AK: I feel that carrier SIMs are excellent for cell phones. Frankly, especially with most phones supporting eSIMs, you having multiple carrier SIMs, may be very beneficial in a traditional phone environment. However, as we continue to go down the path of digital transformation, and more and more companies and organizations are going into this digital transformation path, I feel Multi-Carrier SIMs play a crucial role, maybe, not necessarily always as the primary solution. It has to be, in my opinion, at least a secondary solution. So, for example, let's say Verizon makes a deployment for a factory. It would make sense for a Verizon to bring in a multi-network SIM provider as a backup for when their network goes down or vice versa. You know, have a multi-network provider as your primary to have that flexibility and have a carrier SIM as your secondary, because now you're learning two separate network infrastructures, which truly makes your connectivity very stable and very reliable. And there's some hardware manufacturers, like Peplink, for example. They make really good hardware, that makes this transition from one carrier to another very smooth and very seamless.
RC: For companies out there that are starting to explore IoT solutions for their machines or infrastructure, things like that, what advice do you have for them? What are the things they need to be thinking about as early as possible so it doesn't come back to bite them later on?
AK: I want to say hardware definitely plays a very significant role. An extra $20, $30 is a one-time cost that saves you thousands in truck rolls. So, selecting hardware that pairs well with your connectivity provider is important. Understanding the capabilities of your connectivity provider is also very important because in certain applications, latency plays a very big role. In other applications, latency is absolutely irrelevant. And it's not worth spending the extra couple of bucks for a provider that has low latency because it's irrelevant in your application. But hardware, while it's as good as the network it is on, it is also very important to go with a reputable manufacturer that has the necessary support to minimize any unnecessary truck rolls.
RC: In the work you all do, the partnership side of it, the relationship you have with hardware manufacturers and just the other pieces of a complete solution, that is probably pretty vital in helping customers get to an end-to-end solution that serves all their needs at the right price point and operates the way they expect it to.
AK: Absolutely, which is why the hardware manufacturers that we work with, the reason why we work with them is because we have a very easy path. Problem arises, solve it together, as opposed to you have the whole finger pointing, oh, no, it's not the connectivity, it's the hardware. We work together as a team. So, anytime we put forward a solution, a complete solution to the customer, we always involve the hardware manufacturers. That way we can address issues in a more holistic way.
RC: Fantastic. This has been awesome. I appreciate you taking time because I'm good to educate our audience on all these topics in more detail. For our audience who wants to learn more about what you all have going on, maybe connect with you or other members of the team after this as a follow-up, what's the best way to reach out, stay in touch, kind of stay up to date on everything that's going on?
AK: So, I want to say our website, you know, pondiot.com is a plethora of information. We update that website, I want to say, several times a week. New blogs are coming on. New videos are coming up. To reach me directly, I mean, I'm obviously on LinkedIn. You can reach directly through there or you could just get a request through our website and my sales team would be engaged. And if you need to reach me, just let my sales team know that this is what you want to speak with. Very easy.
RC: Well, Alex, thanks so much. Really appreciate it. I'm excited to get this out to our audience and hopefully we'll have you back later this year. We can catch up on kind of what's been going on in the space, what you all are seeing and go from there.
AK: Awesome. Thank you.