Monitor and manage your SIM cards

We still see a growing demand for monitoring and management capabilities of SIM cards. Customers want to analyze data and as a partner you can offer additional services to monitor the connected devices in which the SIM cards are placed on various variables. This provides insight into your deployment at a detailed level. Think of the location of the SIM cards, data usage, time of a data package and via which operator it was sent. You can of course print out a report for your customer with all the data neatly arranged. You can also set alerts, so that you receive an e-mail or text message in case of abnormal or expected behavior of a SIM card. These additional services offer you various options to provide your customers with a good service in their IoT projects for a fee. We would like to inform you about the various options for monitoring and managing SIM cards.

There are a number of platforms in circulation with which SIM cards can be managed. Most sim management platforms allow to monitor data usage at session level, but also to limit data usage. Sometimes the platforms also provide real-time insight into whether a SIM card is in session and diagnosis tools are available. However, the data usage that is made available in CDRs often occurs with a delay of several hours. Fortunately, in addition to sim management portals, hardware management platforms are also emerging. A big advantage of this is that the user can change settings on a router or a group of routers in the cloud at once.

Differences between a SIM and hardware platform

Using both SIM card and hardware platform is advisable in case of complications. Both portals together provided just a little extra information when, for example, a hardware failure occurs. There are also SIM card suppliers that do not offer a portal. Below we discuss three situations where combining the sim and hardware management portals can offer a solution.

 

Disruption options

In the event of a disruption, if the hardware no longer reports to its cloud management environment, a sim management platform is the first thing you consult. You want to know for sure whether the SIM card is active and in order before you have to look for the disruption in the hardware.

When was the last data session? Is there now a connection to the network? Is it a malfunction at the SIM card supplier? These questions remain, where a sim management platform still offers great advantages.

Manage SIM cards without a management portal

It also happens that SIM card suppliers do not offer a portal, but focus purely on the best possible price per GB. Then it is often a matter of SIM card on or off. With a hardware management portal it is therefore still possible to measure data consumption and to set alerts and rules on data consumption.

 

Own VPN / APN 

Having your own APN/VPN on the network can be an expensive solution for small deployments. We can request this from most SIM card suppliers. This is often chosen when secure connections are important. Interestingly, the capabilities of tunneling and a VPN are also provided on the hardware side. Setting this up is more DIY and can be a lot cheaper.

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