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As deployment volumes for IoT devices scale up and services enter the mainstream, organizations are challenged to construct solid business cases for their propositions because of variables in connectivity pricing. What’s needed is a simple, clear proposition that provides them with a flat rate fee, per device for the lifecycle of a service.

The 1NCE Lifetime Fee offering provides this visibility into costs with a simple proposition of 500MB and 250 SMS for ten years for €10 per device. Other flat rate packages are available from 1NCE that address the needs of organizations that have shorter project lifecycles and 1NCE also offers its FlexTarif proposition that can be tailored for specialized use cases after discussion and analysis – again for a transparent flat rate.

This transparent pricing means that IoT organizations know pre-deployment exactly the cost of connectivity for each unit and therefore have complete clarity regarding this cost element for the life of the service.

Building the business case for an IoT deployment is, at first glance, a matter of constructing a simple equation: Determine the costs of the hardware, the software required to run, maintenance and support, plus the connectivity cost per unit and subtract those from what you will charge for your service to determine the profit. However, while most of these are relatively simple to calculate, some have significant variables that need to be taken into account.

Connectivity pricing is therefore among the greatest headaches for organizations that deploy connected IoT devices in volume to address. Variables in pricing exist between different nations or regions, some pricing is dependent on minimum – or maximum – order numbers and then there is the difference in cost applied to the network type. Often, these variables on a per device basis are small but, when extrapolated to a fleet of millions of devices, they can have substantial business impacts for IoT services.

IoT is not a traditional market place so traditional connectivity pricing tables should not be applied to deployments. Instead, organizations should leave the old world behind and gain the clarity, flexibility and simplicity of connectivity that is covered by a simple one-time, flat rate fee. Doing so means there’s one less moving part involved in calculating your IoT business case.