Cost of Failure

Another system deployed to save costs is Network Level Steering. Consider that you have a Telefonica (O2) SIM and you are network roaming. The device picks EE to connect to (maybe using managed roaming). When the authentication request hits O2’s network, they reject it because they want you to use O2 where possible, as it costs them less.

A device will usually try this process five times before the O2 network will allow the authentication request through. The duration of this varies by device but is typically ten seconds per retry, which equates to a delay of up to 60 seconds before a connection is made.

By this point, most applications will have timed out, and will reinitiate the process, therefore giving the perception that no connection can be made. A true Global Roaming SIM does not have steered roaming applied to it and will connect to the first network it tries on the assumption that the device has already applied your criteria for the best possible connection at that time.

Tip: Use an un-steered roaming SIM from a Global carrier, which will have robust reciprocal agreements worldwide. Some Sims issued by minor carriers do not have robust reciprocal agreements in place and their performance reflects this over the life of a project.

The cost of failure is often disregarded when planning or executing a mobile deployment. Often, to keep the costs and ongoing revenue down, the cheapest option for both the hardware and SIM solution are chosen. If the cost of failure is factored in to the cost of the project, the choice of hardware and SIM provider often changes.

Getting a system that works to specification at the best price means making the right choices on network, software, hardware, application layer and SIM provider and this requires some specialist knowledge. Often customers are reliant on their suppliers for technical advice and that is usually of variable quality.

A marketing team may use the word industrial router to increase the market perception of the hardware, however, when you drill down to the mean time between failures of its component parts, it matches consumer grade devices and not those of true industrial specifications. The cost of engineers being dispatched to reboot and replace hardware more than once during the life of the project means the price differential between two solutions pales into insignificance. It is also important to consider the cost in lost service and the potential of reputation damage.

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