In a digital world increasingly dependent on connected devices, IoT connectivity has become more than a technical requirement—it is a critical business enabler. Yet many enterprises still underestimate the operational and financial impact of unreliable connectivity.
For companies deploying IoT at scale—across smart metering, industrial automation, healthcare, transport, and more—even minor disruptions can have disproportionate consequences. This article explores the hidden costs of unreliable IoT connectivity and outlines strategies to mitigate risk and ensure performance at scale.
Unplanned Downtime: More Common Than You Think
Industry reports indicate that 97% of companies deploying IoT solutions suffer monthly outages. These interruptions are not always catastrophic in isolation, but they create a ripple effect across operations, logistics, and customer experiences.
The cost of downtime is not limited to momentary disruption. According to a survey by OpenGear, the average cost of downtime is estimated at $4,000 per minute. For large-scale IoT deployments, particularly those in revenue-generating or mission-critical environments, this number can be significantly higher.
These costs typically fall into three categories:
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Operational Disruption
A failure in connectivity can disrupt manufacturing lines, disable remote monitoring, delay fault detection, or hinder inventory tracking. This leads to a combination of waste of very costly factory resources, expensive manual workarounds and degraded service delivery. -
Revenue Loss
If your IoT system is used to process payments, monitor assets, or enable on-demand services, connectivity loss translates directly into lost revenue. In sectors like retail, logistics, and energy, even a short outage can have measurable financial consequences. -
Reputational Damage
Service interruptions erode customer trust—especially in sectors where reliability is non-negotiable. Whether it’s a failed charging station, a non-responsive healthcare device, or an offline ticketing system, each incident impacts perception and loyalty.
Connectivity as Critical Infrastructure
Connectivity is by definition the backbone of any IoT solution, and no chain is stronger than the weakest link. Com4 recommends carefully analysing all negative consequences of potential downtime for your application or and service, taking all stakeholders into account. More often than not this will lead to the conclusion that the connectivity itself should be managed as critical infrastructure. Martin Nord, CTO of Com4, emphasizes:
That observation reflects a growing industry understanding: true reliability comes from how well the full stack—hardware, software, network, and connectivity management—works together.
From a provider's standpoint, this means delivering more than robust industrial grade SIM cards. It means ensuring:
- Multi-network access for geographic and signal redundancy
- Scalable, secure device provisioning
- Real-time diagnostics and visibility
- Tools to identify and resolve issues before they impact end users
The Risks of Prioritizing Price Over Resilience
In early IoT projects, businesses often focus on minimizing upfront costs, or minimizing expected subscription cost over time. However, this is not an accurate Total Cost of Ownership calculation, which should also include indirect costs over time. The problem for these businesses arises since connectivity offered at the lowest price often lacks the redundancy, diagnostics, and support needed for operational resilience, hence more susceptible to outages
The cost of just a single outage can easily erase any theoretical savings by choosing the lowest price. In many cases, it can cost more than an entire year of connectivity—especially when factoring in lost revenue, truck rolls, and reputational harm.
On top of this, not all negative effects are covered even in diligent Total Cost of Ownership calculations.
For example, in the healthcare industry, the absence of data or delays in transferring information within patient monitoring systems can result in even more critical consequences. In the security industry, undetected breaches leading to theft or tampering in a food or medicine supply chain can far surpass the worth of the compromised or stolen items.
Once devices are deployed, particularly in remote or challenging locations, addressing inadequate connectivity is far more costly than initially designing for reliability.
In summary, although some providers may present the lowest pricing, it frequently does not equate to the lowest Total Cost of Ownership. When operations are disrupted, the cost of downtime can severely damage your business and significantly affect your staff, customers, and end-users.
Building Resilience: Key Considerations
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Multi-Network Access
Access to multiple mobile networks ensures redundancy and maximum availability—especially in rural or cross-border scenarios. This is the result of a combination of properties, design and configuration of both the SIM, Device modem, Core networks and Roaming agreements. -
eSIM and eUICC
Modern eSIMs with SGP.32 support provide flexibility to switch operators remotely if needed, with no physical intervention. -
Hardware Integration
Antenna placement, module compatibility, and early-stage testing are essential to avoid signal issues and optimize performance.
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Monitoring and Diagnostics
A mature platform provides live visibility into device health and alerts, minimizing troubleshooting time and reducing costly downtime. -
API
With advanced API capability, customers can easily gather monitoring and diagnostics information in their own applications and systems, and combine this with additional sources of monitoring outside the mobile core domain for a multi-source view, like device and service level diagnostics. A good API also enables rapid and even automatic execution of mitigating actions.
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Scalability
Whether you're managing 100 or 100,000 devices, you need a partner that can grow with your business—with the tools, SLAs, and people to support it. Here, it is important to also consider evolving technology support, like the role of 5G, LPWA and RedCap to future-proof scaled deployments.
Selecting the Right Provider
When evaluating IoT connectivity providers, ask yourself:
- Can they deliver high availability with network redundancy?
- Do they provide real-time diagnostics and actionable insights?
- Do they offer modern programmatic interfaces, so that you can make most use of relevant information?
- Is their support proactive and specialized in IoT, not just mobile infrastructure?
- Will they scale with my business over the next 5–10 years, including timely technology migrations?
Com4 has more than a decade track-record of delivering a core network uptime above 99.99% uptime, backed by telecom-grade infrastructure, dedicated support, and active network monitoring. Com4’s highly reliable performance and customer-centric advisory services sets it apart in a crowded market. We don’t just sell connectivity—we help our customers engineer resilience from day one.
Conclusion: Connectivity Should Never Be an Afterthought
In a landscape where IoT is driving automation, optimization, and transformation across industries, connectivity is no longer just an operational concern—it is a strategic one.
Martin Nord underlines “Investing in reliable, secure, and high-uptime connectivity reduces the total cost of ownership, protects your revenue, and ensures business continuity.”
At Com4, we help businesses across sectors deploy, monitor, and scale mission-critical IoT solutions—with peace of mind built in.
If you're expanding your IoT deployment or struggling with poor performance, our team is ready to help you assess and strengthen your connectivity strategy.
