Verizon Business has added international IoT management capabilities that make it easier for enterprises to deploy and manage those devices in foreign countries.

The deal has Verizon partnering with fellow telecom operators Bell Canada and Norway-based Telenor to provide enterprise customers with cellular capabilities for IoT devices running in countries where those operators provide service. For Bell Canada that is basically Canada, and for Telenor that includes Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Malaysia, Thailand, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Verizon Business enterprise customers will be able to manage their IoT devices using the carrier’s ThingSpace IoT management platform, which includes its Global IoT Orchestration product. This single pane of glass also has Verizon at the center of device management for those devices outside of its home network.

Bell Canada and Telenor will also have the option to launch a similar product supporting roaming across the trio’s markets.

Shamik Basu, executive director of IoT and edge solutions at Verizon Business, explained the move was designed to simplify the management of global IoT deployments for customers.

“We needed to kind of pull together a strategy and execute on that strategy to give customers a very highly programmatic platform where they could actually start with us and deploy globally,” Basu said.

Basu explained that enterprises are faced with a complex path in their IoT lifecycle, a challenge exacerbated by international roaming challenges.

“When you're looking at this volume and looking at the simplification that customers want, it's important to know that during the process of deployment, they go through many cycles of manufacturing, iterating and testing, then trying to go into multiple markets, run trials and then finally come to a point where [they] put this in the hands of customers. And then eventually manage the lifecycle of these devices and get full visibility,” Basu said. “That’s the lifecycle of IoT and we want to do anything we can to simplify that for the customer.”

Basu added that Verizon Business plans to name other operator partners later this year. The carrier’s Global IoT Orchestration platform includes operators that provide coverage in most countries around the world.

“The most relevant regions on the planet that our customers are looking to go to will have adequate coverage,” Basu said. Those customers will also have the ability to manage specific usage for IoT devices across markets with overlapping telecom operator coverage choices.

“That’s what our customers want: They want to have the right operator relationships but not have to compromise and program and reprogram for each operator,” Basu added.

eSIM makes IoT things easier

This simplicity is also helped by the growing eSIM ecosystem, which is a “virtual” iteration of the long-standing SIM card used to authenticate devices onto a network. The eSIM has gained significant adoption by wireless telecom carriers around the world and, maybe more importantly, from Apple through its various cellular-enabled iPhone, iPad and Watch devices.

Basu said Verizon Business is “prompting customers to future-proof their deployments” by going with eSIM.

“We're finding a lot of momentum in that space. People really want to do this. They want to adopt them because they want to be flexible,” Basu said. “When one of the large OEMs does it, like in the recent Apple phones they've actually gone out and put in an eSIM, when that happens the tide rises.”

The Verizon Business platform will also continue to support legacy physical SIM cards, which Basu said is essential for many verticals that have long-standing IoT devices continuing to operate in rugged environments.

“This is about the relationship with the customer, all the way from innovation to manufacturing to deployment lifecycle,” Basu added. “We're here to be part of the journey as the single MNO and we are recruiting like-minded tier-one operators so customers have that confidence that they’re working with tier-one networks no matter what part of the world they go to.”

IoT market opportunities

The IoT market remains a low-overhead, high-growth market for telecommunication operators.

Analyst firm IoT Analytics recently predicted the installed base of connected IoT devices would surge from 14.4 billion units last year to 30 billion units by 2027.

Analysys Mason more specifically claimed large enterprises had deployed more than 1.5 billion IoT connections by the end of last year, which it expects to double by the end of 2027. This will support a $4.3 billion increase in revenue growth for operators supporting those IoT connections, or more than half of the $8.1 billion in total operator revenues generated from IoT deployments.

“For enterprise-focused mobile operators, IoT is a crucial service, perhaps the crucial service for achieving revenue growth over the next five years,” Catherine Hammond, research director at Analysys Mason, wrote in the report. “Despite pressure on unit prices, the rapid growth in the volume of deployments is expected to support a strong, sustainable business. For those operators with established propositions, IoT is also likely to deliver higher margins than most other growth services in the enterprise market.”