CradlePoint has led the industry by making it very easy for our customers to choose their cellular carrier by virtue of our routers supporting “plug-n-play” modem technology. Customers can also change their modem (and carrier) to reduce their data costs or improve their connection or service level. This flexibility allows companies to take advantage of the competitive swings in the cellular market and change carriers when necessary to obtain the best combination of price and signal strength for each of their office locations.
As easy as it’s been for CradlePoint customers to change their modem or carrier on our products, it was still challenging for locations without on-premise IT staff (and for many companies that means just about every remote location). Remote offices without technical staff would require dispatch of a service truck to physically change their modem. These “truck rolls” are costly, and difficult to schedule during the slow times (evenings and weekends) when they would be least impactful to ongoing business.
Now, with the introduction of their new MC400 universal modems, customers have even more flexibility in their choice of carriers and can future-proof their network solution—while avoiding those painful truck rolls.
Suppose, for example, that your company has been using Carrier X but then realizes it could lower data costs or get better connectivity by switching to Carrier Y. With the MC400 modem, you won’t need to go out and buy another piece of hardware to accommodate the new carrier because the ability to handle multiple carriers is built right in! Second, the switch from one carrier to another can be done remotely across your distributed locations using CradlePoint Enterprise Cloud Manager.
One great feature of Enterprise Cloud Manager is the ability to manage your remote locations by geographic area. A region manager can use Enterprise Cloud Manager to select all of their locations and tell Enterprise Cloud manager to switch all of the devices from carrier X to carrier Y. You can even tell Enterprise Cloud Manager to schedule the change in the middle of the night or weekend for the least impact to your business.
In a sense, our new MC400 is analogous to the ability to unlock a cell phone so that is can be used with any carrier. The net effect is to give our customers more choice and lower their network operating expenses.
Companies that use cellular data services may have felt “locked in” to a given carrier after their initial equipment deployment. That’s because they knew the cost of a service visit for each remote location would consume most of the savings of a carrier switch. Now, the MC400 combined with Enterprise Cloud Manager removes these roadblocks and enables remote selection of your distributed locations’ cellular carriers.
Our relationship with the carriers has been symbiotic. CradlePoint was first to bring low-cost, reliable cellular data to mainstream businesses. We work very closely with the carriers to get our products certified on their networks. As a result, the carriers know how well our devices work. One of the things we hear all the time from new customers is that they chose CradlePoint because their cellular carrier recommended our products.
By removing the “lock” on data services, our “universal” MC400 modem might be said to be an industry disruptor. We’re confident the net effect will be good for our customers and the carriers. Our solution will give our customers more flexibility, which can lead to lower costs that over time will enable more businesses to use cellular data. This brings more customers to our carrier partners, enabling them to continue to grow their networks and drive the technology forward. We really like these win-win solutions.
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