Global connectivity provider Soracom is claiming to have North America's “largest IoT coverage area” with the launch of a new cellular data plan it calls US-MAX.
As a pureplay IoT connectivity provider, Soracom connects devices in the remote field to cloud environments. The company can be considered a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), as it works with wholesale partners to offer cellular connectivity by using the partner's MNO network.
But one thing that makes the company different from the traditional MVNO is that it uses a cloud infrastructure and can launch new environments in different countries at any time.
“What makes us unique is we built everything all the infrastructure as MVNO on top of AWS cloud, so everything we do is software-based. We are running 100% on cloud and offering global connectivity services,” said Kenta Yasukawa, CTO and co-founder of Soracom.
Soracom can also create a virtual gateway for customers, so they can pair the cloud back end and their devices to create an isolated environment for their devices and servers. Because of the provider’s cloud-based infrastructure, devices can securely access cloud environments such as AWS, Google and Microsoft.
Traditionally, it has been difficult and time consuming to set up a similar environment because when working with MVNOs, it was necessary to have a private APN setup in the network. “And you had to create a VPN connection from the network to your data center. It could have been a several month-long project, easily,” Yasukawa added.
“But in our case, we have software-based back end so customers can launch a virtual private gateway within a matter of minutes and create a peering link from our gateway to the cloud-based back end, within a matter of minutes as well, by clicking around on our cloud console.”
Verizon now available for Soracom devices
Soracom this week announced its new cellular data plan, US-MAX, which provides IoT data coverage across the three largest wireless networks in North America: AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon. Prior to the launch of US-MAX, Soracom’s equipment was not able to tap into Verizon’s networks.
“As a customer centric company, we listen to customer feedback and pain points. We’ve been hearing from customers that have areas where AT&T and T-Mobile cannot cover but they see signal from Verizon. That's why we worked so hard on this one to make it available,” Yasukawa told Fierce.
The availability of all three carriers’ networks will allow IoT devices with Soracom’s SIM cards to automatically switch between any of the three leading cellular networks, creating additional redundancy for operations set up in remote areas.
Soracom's containerized multi-IMSI capability, which is compatible with both eUICC and UICC standards, means that US-MAX can be downloaded over-the-air to any existing device with Soracom IoT SIMs or eSIMs in North America.
While the company can cover any vertical, Yasukawa said some are growing faster than others. For example, connected health and medical, oil and gas and smart agriculture are ahead of the curve on IoT because these sectors often need to deploy devices in remote areas or rely on IoT connectivity for critical operations.
Yasukawa said companies like Horteau (in agriculture) and TOKU systems (in oil and gas) are examples of use cases where data needs to be sent to a cloud environment.
These companies utilize cloud services on the back end, which means they need to provide unique credentials to authenticate each and every IoT device in their network. Secure protocols and TLS encryption are also required to communicate with the cloud service endpoints, both of which can be resource-intensive, especially for small sensors and microcontrollers deployed in remote areas where battery life is a concern.
To address these challenges, Soracom developed a smart proxy that customers send their data to, which handles the “heavy lifting” of authentication, encryption and protocol conversion. By offloading these tasks, the proxy ensures that the data integrates with cloud services like AWS IoT and Microsoft Azure IoT – made possible because Soracom issues its own SIM cards and operates its own cellular infrastructure, enabling the company to uniquely identify each device.
“TOKU systems and Horteau are great examples of leveraging this capability,” Yasukawa said. “They now can reduce the battery consumption by offloading encryption and authentication, and by doing that they can also reduce the amount of data they have to transmit over cellular network, which is usually expensive compared to cloud side communication.”
Soracom supports older generations of cellular technologies like 2G and 3G, but Yasukawa said both have been sunsetting in the U.S., and encourages customers to transition to newer generations like 4G/LTE.
A symbiotic relationship with carriers
Soracom is a technology partner to more than 20,000 companies and connects more than five million IoT devices globally.
Yasukawa said that rather than viewing the company as in competition with carriers, Soracom is able to work alongside its partners to support customers as they build out more IoT environments.
“When a carrier sees a customer who is focusing on IoT, they’d rather put us in the front and we will support that customer together,” he said. “We are adding more IoT-focused cloud integration to carriers’ networks, so that the carriers can expand to IoT businesses without having to have a whole infrastructure by themselves.”
And coverage is key for being able to support these IoT infrastructures, Yasukawa said, which is why Soracom is making moves to partner with smaller carriers in the U.S.
“Definitely the including Verizon network into our supported carrier was the big priority for us,” he added. “We are also aware that when it comes to rural areas in particular, it's important to have a relationship with regional carriers – tier two, tier three carriers – to be able to have dense coverage in those areas.”
According to Yasukawa, Soracom is currently working with another partner to create a new subscription offering that “will open up support for regional carriers as well,” although the details of that negotiation are not yet public.