Jola Cloud Solutions' Blog

NB-IoT is a low power wide area network (LPWAN) technology. Narrowband Internet of Things is one of the new breeds of Low Power Wide Area Network (LP-WAN) standards.

It has been developed for devices which have a long battery life. It provides long range communication, with the ability to connect a wide range of assets.

It is specifically designed for connecting devices with low bandwidth requirements, using low power, while providing wider and deeper network coverage. Devices can last ten years in the field without a battery charge and connect as far as 10km.

NB-IoT is an industrial-grade LPWA solution which runs on a licenced spectrum, which guarantees quality of service and supports two-way communications. It is compatible with existing cellular network infrastructure and offers the same level of security as LTE.

Who uses this technology?

NB-IoT is being used in street lighting, smart bins, smart parking and traffic monitoring, as well as parking sensors. Their devices don’t need much power and have a long battery life. The SIMs required for these smart solutions are low-cost, long-life SIM cards, which can be activated and controlled within a central portal.

This technology is also being used in the consumer space with smart metering. Gas and electric companies are installing hundreds of thousands of smart meters, which require a low power SIM on a long-term contract. Usage is minimal, costs are a few pence per SIM, however the contract length is typically 5 years plus.

Warehouses are adopting smart technologies and there are opportunities for resellers to supply NB-IoT SIMs in warehouse monitoring, within safety devices such as cameras in lifts used by lone workers washing windows at height and in cranes.

In agriculture, NB-IoT SIMs are being used in monitoring devices for animals, crops and soil. They need a SIM card with the same lifespan as their device.

In laboratories, NB-IoT SIMs are being used in smart laboratories for monitoring and tracking.

LinkedIn was designed to help us manage our professional identities online.  It allows us to build and engage our professional network. With over 675 million members, LinkedIn was designed to help us access knowledge, insights and opportunities.

My experience with LinkedIn both professionally and personally has been positive. A quick scroll through the news feed keeps me up to date with events taking place, awards being won, new products being launched, and new business closed. I also get insights from the comms channel, marketing community and entrepreneurs working in technology across the globe.

Jola uses LinkedIn to connect with partners and prospects, keeping our target audience up to date with current opportunities and support available to win them. We identify current problems and propose unique solutions to solve them. Our messaging is unique to us, reflecting our own abilities and strengths. We focus on building up our connections with decision makers within specific targets. As our connections learn more about Jola and the solutions we offer, further influencers connect and engage with us, leading to private messages with individual account managers and entry into our sales process. Reaching the person with the problem with our unique solution is our goal. By carefully researching our audience and crafting messages to attract their attention.

Used correctly LinkedIn is a fantastic database and a great lead generator. The problem comes from users not applying marketing fundamentals to the platform. Are you thinking about who you want to connect with or reactively accepting requests? Are you focussed on getting the content out there but not considering who to? Once you have your connection list streamlined, you can then focus on crafting messages to educate and attract your prospects.

Do you send the same request email to everyone? Your email request is really important. Why should that individual connect with you? How will being connected to you benefit them? This message should be unique and compelling. Do you then have an automated email ready to send to anyone that accepts you? Do you find this approach works? It may be better to send fewer, more bespoke emails. Resist the temptation to assume what people want and go straight to a pitch. Timing is everything. Doing your research and being sure of the problem and the people involved in solving it is always helpful. Having a contact to recommend you and sponsor you in is also incredibly helpful.

In my view LinkedIn is a blessing. When used correctly it can help you build your brand and your pipeline. Like all marketing tools having clear objectives, a well thought-through strategy, a defined target audience, scheduled activity and set targets and measures will result in a better experience and results.

When deciding to grow your business, you may look to recruit a sales team and hope the investment will be rewarded. When the new sales team starts, there are often challenges to overcome.

If the company is not well-known, the sales team may have an uphill struggle generating new leads. Without professional product materials, great pricing and credentials, they may struggle to win opportunities. They may also find themselves being pulled into other areas of the business, resulting in less time to look for and close new business.

How can marketing help?

By working closely with sales teams, marketing can draft a plan outlining the target audience and strategy to attract and close the easiest to win, most profitable prospects. The team can craft a communications strategy to increase brand awareness and to promote unique solutions. By creating a well-optimised website, marketing can generate regular leads and on-line sales. They can connect with key prospects, focusing on unique solutions to current problems.  

Marketing can create and manage events to allow sales to meet with prospects face-to-face or arrange online demonstrations, webinars or video calls. The team can keep an eye on the market and feed actions into the sales team to make contact with key prospects at appropriate times. They can also put together case studies and awards entries to increase credibility and the value of the brand.

Jola eSIMs are not what you might expect. They are not the eSIMs Apple use in watches. They are cost-effective, multi-network, roaming data, plastic SIM cards, which are un-steered.

With eSIM, resellers can beat the Mobile Network Operators on price, offer a differentiated multi-network product and still make a good margin. End customers don’t need expensive site surveys and they can’t be locked into uncompetitive, commercial terms by individual mobile networks. 

eSIMs give resellers a competitive edge over the mobile networks directly and are easy to sell and support. Resellers are partnering with Jola for wholesale eSIMs they can manage in Mobile Manager. Mobile Manager is Jola’s online management portal for ordering and managing estates of mobile data SIMs. Our white label portal communicates in real-time with multiple 4G networks and can be used by both resellers and their end users. Mobile Manager handles SIM activations, ceases, suspensions, reports, alerts and bolt-ons.

How can it transform your business?

Telecoms resellers looking to grow their businesses often add complementary products to their portfolio. They look for products which are easy to sell, will increase their average revenue per user and help them to win new business. eSIMs fit the bill as they give resellers the opportunity to win new business from existing customers in a variety of industries, as well as sell to new prospects.

Margin in Mobile Online is a channel event organised by BPL Business Media Ltd, the team behind Comms Dealer, Comms Vision and the Comms National Awards. It is taking place on 16^th and 17^th September 2020. The event is designed to promote the current opportunity for the channel to get into mobile. It will highlight how easy it is to add mobile to your proposition, differentiate your offering and generate profitable recurring, revenue streams with minimal effort.

There has never been a better time for the channel to be adding mobile solutions to their proposition. During lockdown Jola has recruited 113 new partners selling mobile.

Our SIMs are used in buses, coaches, trains, taxis, homes and offices in 4G routers and IP CCTV cameras. They are used in tracking devices for goods in transit both in the UK and abroad, by road and by sea. They are being used in schools, universities, halls of residence and student accommodations. You can find them on building sites and in new smart homes. We have SIMs in digital signage in well-known supermarkets and on motorways. Our SIMs are used in cranes and lifts as part of safety devices for lone workers at height. They are also found in wind and solar farms around the country. Internationally, our SIMs are used in back-up devices for petrol stations and shops.

In the public sector we have won bids with local authorities for our SIMs to be used in body cameras, push-to-talk radios, personal alarms, monitoring systems, gates, tablets and phones. We believe every reseller has a live opportunity for mobile data within their customer base today and we can set-up and onboard new partners within 5 days.

In our speaking slot on 17^th September at 10.30hrs we will introduce our portfolio, which includes unlimited data SIMs and multi-network eSIMs. Our eSIMs are not what you might think. They are not the consumer eSIMs you find in Apple Watches. They are plastic, triple-cut, industrial M2M, eSIM cards or embedded industrial eSIMs. They are cost-effective, multi-network roaming data SIM cards. You may not think there is money to be made in IoT, but in every vertical market, there is an IoT opportunity that needs a SIM card, from vending machines to monitoring devices. IoT SIM card deals tend to be much larger and much stickier and you can win them against the mobile carriers with a differentiated, cost-effective, multi-network, roaming product, that won’t need replacing any time soon. We have partners who are winning deals against the MNOs in retail, the public sector, construction, security and transport and logistics.

COVID-19 caused businesses to adapt quickly to remote working, to ensure business continuity during the pandemic. It highlighted a critical need for digital technologies and innovative solutions in healthcare, to cope with increased demand and enforced restrictions.

The healthcare sector is in desperate need of technology to avoid unnecessary visits to surgeries and hospitals and to protect frontline workers. Opportunities for mobile broadband, cloud-based telehealth software and mobile data, flooded the market, as demand for real-time communication and remote monitoring increased.

Patient experience has changed dramatically during the pandemic, with patients encouraged to wait for doctor call backs or arrange a video call. Phone systems are being upgraded, telehealth software is being rolled out and smart devices given to mobile healthcare workers. Some stadiums, hotels and exhibition centres have been turned into pop-up hospitals and the channel was called upon to set up communications and monitoring equipment.

Jola partners have been providing fast, reliable mobile broadband connections, telephony solutions and M2M/IoT data SIMs for monitoring devices and CCTV cameras, managed in Mobile Manager.

Green technology is an integral part of our global energy infrastructure. There are over 341,000 wind turbines globally. MSPs are using IoT to help wind turbines operate with greater efficiency.

With their considerable height and large blades, modern wind turbines are instantly recognisable. When the wind blows, the turbine’s blades turn around a rotor. The rotor is connected to a main shaft, which in turn rotates a generator to produce electricity. Wind turbines are expensive and complex pieces of equipment that can include up to 1,000 sensors, actuators, integrating strain gauges, bearing monitors and power conditioning technology.

The turbine can control blade speed and power generation – a sophisticated task demanding numerous cooperating processors closing high-speed loops and implementing intelligent monitoring and optimisation algorithms.

There’s a lot that could go wrong during normal, everyday functioning. IoT is helping to remotely monitor and control wind turbines both in-land and off-shore. Cloud-based IoT analytics ecosystem platforms are being used to detect, diagnose and prognose faults in wind turbine components. Gaining a better understanding of wind turbine components in real-time helps to maximise turbine lifespan and minimise operating and management costs.

MSPs are looking to include eSIMs as part of their IoT solution for the following reasons:

Multi-network and un-steered

eSIMs offer the best possible service in any location. The eSIM will always enable devices to connect to the best available cellular network and customers can also manually select networks.

Cost-effective

Turbine companies are saving thousands by not requiring site surveys. eSIMs are competitively priced to help resellers compete with Mobile Network Operators.

Managed

eSIMs are managed within a white label portal, giving MSPs complete visibility and control over their entire estate of eSIMs globally.

If you don’t have experienced Microsoft Engineers in-house, provisioning Direct Routing for Teams can be complicated and time consuming. Jola has solved this problem by launching a fully automated provisioning platform, setting up customers within minutes.

Direct Routing for Teams is a great opportunity for the channel, as packages are more cost-effective and feature-rich than the Calling Plans available from Microsoft.

Our automated configuration for Direct Routing is based on best-practice. It gives all resellers the opportunity to sell, provision and manage Direct Routing within a self-serve portal, without the need for specialist knowledge, skills or software.

Missing actual phones?

Many users are happy to make calls from the screen, but some prefer physical handsets. For these people Jola includes three Yealink desk phones, certified for Microsoft Teams, with their Teams Direct Routing product.

The new handsets are cost-effective, with multi-touch screens and HD audio. They are also compatible with Bluetooth headsets. As the country begins to recover from COVID, we anticipate that many business owners will reflect on how effective Microsoft Teams has been during lock-down. They may consider upgrading to Phone System and adding Direct Routing. We think this could be a great opportunity for the channel to increase ARPU and win new business.

ISPs have been looking for an efficient and inexpensive, 4G back-up product, and a solution for remote endpoints on SDWAN and MPLS networks. Until now there has only been device-based layer 3 or VPN products to choose from.

What’s Jola’s Solution?

Jola is the first MVNO to offer a true ‘layer 2’ 4G product designed specifically for ISPs. Every ISP with L2TP infrastructure for fixed line broadband and Ethernet should be able to consume Jola’s Mobile L2TP service, with no modification to their edge network.

What is Jola’s Mobile L2TP?

Jola’s Mobile L2TP gives ISPs full control over routing and IP addressing, facilitating the creation of fixed-line failover, pre-ethernet and stand-alone internet access services. Mobile L2TP provides access to all four UK mobile networks and 450 networks globally.

What problems does it solve?

ISPs can now interconnect at layer 2 directly into the Jola eSIM MVNO platform in London (or any other AWS connected location in the world) – with the option of failover to a secondary location for the delivery of resilient services. The solution is inexpensive, reliable and straightforward to set-up. With un-steered multi-network eSIMs, ISPs are not tied to any particular network and no longer need to do a site survey to determine the best signal – globally.

Supply Chain

Right at the start of the global pandemic, the supply chain for devices, such as 4G routers, was affected. Factories in China had closed down and for a while devices manufactured there were in short supply.

Conferences were cancelled

Mobile World Congress was cancelled, Margin in Voice and Data went online and Channel Live was moved to January 2021. Opportunities to collaborate and partner were lost, as well as companies being out of pocket.

Fixed Line Services

Installation of fixed line services stalled, and some companies reported a decline in sales, as end users looked for an alternative solution.

Mobile Broadband

The need for fast, reliable internet connectivity increased dramatically, with parents working from home and kids being home-schooled. Many households turned to online shopping and invested in online entertainment such as Netflix and Disney+. Although the need for faster internet connectivity was evident, fear of 5G increased, with online scare campaigns linking COVID-19 to 5G masts.

Changes in behaviour

As customers went online, businesses changed their approach, many offering buy-online options, supported by digital marketing campaigns. Messaging changed to reflect the mood of the nation. Companies started to empathise more and respond with positive messaging. Supporting the NHS and key workers became part of many advertising campaigns. As events were cancelled, so were the sponsorships and alternative ways to engage with consumers were developed. With much more time being spent on social networks across the age groups, new digital campaigns were rolled out.

What can we learn from this?

We need to be aware of the changing needs of our customers, as businesses implement return-to-work strategies. It may not be possible for all staff to return to offices, due to social distancing measures so companies may need help managing their IT and Telecoms in a much more flexible way. With so many companies being influenced by social media, do we need to consider our marketing strategies to attract new customers? With so many companies looking to buy online do we need to consider the way in which our customers are now buying services? Do we need to review what we sell and how we sell it? With social distancing here for a while do we need to re-consider the way we collaborate and partner with others to ensure innovation is not stifled?