FAQs
Answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about Onomondo can be found here. If you can’t find the answer to your question, don’t hesitate to contact us.
Why choose Onomondo
If having stable SIM connectivity is important, have a quick chat with us. We don’t have steering or network preferences on our SIM cards. We leave the PLMN list blank on the SIM, thus enabling your device to connect to whatever base stations are locally available.
Additionally, if you don’t want the headache of thinking about which MVNO gives access to 2G/3G/4G or LTE-M and NB-IoT in certain countries, Onomondo has access to all these technologies and multiple networks in the same country for local rates.
If your device ever has issues connecting with a network, you can use our platform to identify what may be causing it remotely. These troubleshooting tools are like having Wireshark available to all of your devices from anywhere.
No. We want to help you always stay ready and not wasting budget, so with Onomondo you only pay for SIMs that connect to the internet each month.
Typically, PLMN lists are based on commercial agreements. So operators will have local contracts in their non-home countries so your SIMs can connect to specific networks when you roam outside their network. A negative consequence of non-blank PLMN lists is that your device could prioritize networks with weak signals over networks with strong signals.
Onomondo will not add PLMN lists to SIMs, which means that we deliver you SIMs without steering built into them thus enabling your devices to choose the best signal in any given area. By giving you access to all possible networks, your devices benefit from the range of all RANs available in an area, including the latest IoT cellular technologies LTE-M and NB-IoT.
You will have what we call the freedom to leave. This means any SIM purchased from Onomondo is your property and as such you own all “keys” associated with it. The majority of MNOs and MVNOs will disable keys at the end of a contract, rendering your SIMs useless. With the freedom to leave, this gives you the capability to approach another operator and if decided, we will coordinate with them to update the SIMs OTA to that operator, leaving Onomondo entirely. This is done in the general 3GPP standard way, so nothing magical about this – most providers just don’t offer this.
The tech
Normally, MVNOs make roaming agreements and buy data from local operators. In that way, the MVNO is a billing partner who doesn’t handle any data – data is still transmitted by the local operators.
Onomondo has done direct integrations with RANs and thus becomes the operator itself. In Onomondo’s model, there is only one operator (Onomondo) and a lot of base stations your devices can use are based on the strength of the signal, not according to preference from roaming agreements.
Onomondo is an ITU (International Telecom Union) approved MNO but acts as an MVNO. We rent access to the base stations and Radio Access Networks (RAN) of local MNOs. We operate our own core network and we have integrated it into every single network that we have access to.
Onomondo does not rely on any third-party roaming agreement. Technically we have integrated our core into every single network that we offer to our customers. This gives the advantage of equal performance as local mobile operators on latency and connectivity, but doing this globally over 700 in more than 180 countries.
Usually static deployments only need one network to work well – and that’s the network with the strongest signal for the device location. Finding this out takes time for research and resources for deployment since it’s hard to know exactly where each device ends up (country, region, city, street).
With Onomondo, your device can use the strongest signal without steering to weaker base stations. You can also use additional networks as backup with our Network Marketplace.
Think about no hassle of choosing one network provider for one area, and another for a different location – all is automated. So instead of having lots of operators as partners, you’ll have one in all the countries.
The platform has full diagnostic tools on how the devices authenticate to the network, how authentication is done in the RAN via Signaling logs, and even showing the individual data packages.
Leaving Onomondo SIM on the device gives you a good idea of the anomalies or package sizes the device sends.
The next step is for your developers to start optimizing the code, take a look at the Onomondo platform to see improvements and continue optimizing until a perfect balance is achieved.
Our own platform is a simple GUI built on top of our API. Therefore, everything you can do on the platform, you can also do via the API. The only thing you will need to do to start using the API is generate an API key, which are managed on the platform.
We have a tool that allows you to add and customize webhooks, enabling you to set up information flows that fit your use case.
Costs & Fees
Then you should take a look at a feature called Connectors.
Onomondo connectors allow the encryption, cloud certificates, and headers to be added to the network before the public domain. This means removing SDK on the device, and everything happens in the network. We have done this for major IoT cloud platforms like AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and IBM Watson.
Onomondo has a variety of packages to choose from. Each package has pricing broken up into three main parts:
- Data prices
- SIM fees
- Platform cost
For more information about pricing, view our pricing page.
Troubleshooting
Onomondo has integrated every RAN into the same globally distributed core network, you have access to 100% real-time data insights everywhere (180+ countries).
You can do most of your debugging directly on the platform – you don’t need to create a support ticket to ask why the device is not able to connect. You just take a look at the SIM insights in Signaling Logs or make a live PCAP download and get what you need. It’s like having Wireshark ready to go at all times.
If there are wider network issues, we will know this before you due to our monitoring. If that is the case, we’ll update our status page and you can see the past events.
Nothing is perfect, and we want to be transparent if and when any issues arise.
If your questions have been left unanswered, please reach out to us, and we will set you up with a connectivity expert who will be able to answer your more detailed questions.
Subsequently, if you are still interested in Onomondo, our CS team will onboard you and your team, and they are top experts who have been involved in several development projects and operations of larger deployments on a global scale.
And you are most welcome to contact our support if you don’t feel comfortable reading PCAP files yourself. No worries, you’ll get used to it and will start saving a lot of time in troubleshooting.