HITT- Advancements in wireless technology and device management – Sep 10, 2024

In a HITT training session led by Telarus solutions architect Jason Kaufman, the focus was on the evolution of wireless applications and mobile device management. The discussion highlighted the transition from traditional SIM cards to eSIM and vSIM technologies, which enhance connectivity and security for users on the go. New devices, including 5G-enabled laptops and routers, were showcased, emphasizing their performance in various environments and the importance of a seamless onboarding process for new hires. The session also covered the benefits of a managed device-as-a-service model, which streamlines IT operations and improves user experience. Overall, the advancements in wireless technology are set to revolutionize connectivity and device management for businesses.

Introduction

Today, we welcome Telarus solutions architect Jason Kaufman presenting today’s training. He’s joined by Tom Shinners, SVP of product at Infinite Wireless, and Jason McKenna, senior director of mobility and IoT at MetTel.

Jason, Jason, and Tom, hey. Welcome to all of you. Very interested in this additional wireless application and capability. How y’all doing?

Doing great.

Doing well.

Thanks for having me today. Fabulous. Thanks, Doug.

You bet. Well, Jason, let’s get it going. Fill us in.

Alright. Yeah. If we can go to the next slide, please. Quick introduction on exactly, you know, kind of what we’re gonna talk about.

I know Doug kinda led us there, but, you know, there’s a lot of confusion on, you know, why would a cybersecurity architect wanna talk about, mobile devices and SIM enablement and all that. We’re actually seeing a big traction in the, companies wanting to control how, you know, users are accessing that data remotely and how much they could control not only from the connection, but also the devices themselves. So we’re gonna talk about a few different ways that you can get that cellular connection to those different devices. Everybody’s assuming that you’re limited by tablets and phones, but there are many other ways you could do that.

And then how you can register it. And then what also is there besides just getting the device and the connectivity when we start getting into the MDAS and the managed laptop as a service? So I don’t wanna steal too much thunder on certain terminologies that we’ll save for for later when we get to Tom and Jason’s pre presentations.

Exploring eSIM Technology

But let’s move to the next slide. A couple things I wanna go over first. So when we talk about SIM enablement, what does that physically mean? You have different things as, SIM cards.

So everybody knows and loves everybody’s had a cell phone and a tablet, that little hardware device that plugs in and that’s what registers to the cellular towers, whether you’re using a public carrier like Verizon, AT and T, T Mobile, or combination of them or, you know, you have your own private, cellular network. You have the options of registering that with a SIM card. But the the latest technology now is going through what’s called eSIM, and I don’t wanna steal Tom’s thunder on the next stage of v SIM, so the virtual SIM card. So how can you register these different devices capabilities are?

Newer devices allow for eSIM, and it’s important when you’re thinking about deploying these devices, you don’t have to wait for the hardware to ship to you. You could do this over the air and register what’s called the IMEI number. Think of it as like a serial number that says, hey, I have this registration capabilities, and I wanna register by this device, by this recognition number on it. So when we’re looking at the different SIM cards and eSIM enablement, you know, you got the cell phone there, you got the watch, you got the tablets, you got the laptops.

Dual SIM and Its Benefits

But we’re gonna go in some other different areas where that’s very keen on what a business can utilize those today. And not only can you do one SIM card for registration, you can do dual SIM. Most devices now have dual SIM enablement to where you can use multiple carriers. What flexibility does that give you?

You know, you have multiple carriers for redundancy. You could register one for Verizon, one for AT and T. You can have both on the same network if you want to, if you have a big larger plan. And what does that enable?

You get multiple phone numbers if you have a cell device, that you can use one for work, one for personal. You could, you know, have different use cases for each one, different companies even if you have, like, a conglomerate that has multiple avenues of revenue.

You can also do SIM aggregation now. So think of it as SD WAN, but kind of from the the cellular capabilities to where not only can you have one or two different options, but you can use both options at the same time.

So think of, you know, somebody that wants to have a very rural deployment to where they only have cellular, you can’t get a wire line there.

They can take two SIM cards, aggregate the the data capabilities together in the speeds, and you can kinda aggregate everything together to where, let’s say, you have two, five hundred meg connections from a cellular tower, which you have really good five g connection, it’s basically almost double minus ten percent of what those speeds are by using an aggregated, you know, SIM device. So there’s a lot of capabilities there you don’t think of that you can get a lot of what wireline requirements are when it comes to high speed, high data. You could put that over cellular now with cellular enablement with what these companies are pushing with towers.

Security Enhancements with Cellular Devices

And then the latest stuff is now secures them. So companies are starting to come out with a cellular enabled device that the first hit point it gets when it gets to the cellular tower is through a SaaSy firewall. So think of, you know, that Versa application, the the Fortinet, you know, that type of technology that you would normally get on a customer’s prem or on a cloud firewall situation, now you have a cellular device that automatically goes back to that. So and it’s and it’s, you know, managed and co managed by the actual, cellular provider itself.

So now you’re protecting all that data. You’re protecting the voice traffic. There’s a lot of things you could do once that happen. So you get the firewall, the the web gateway, the the VPN and DTNA.

So all those fancy terminology you get in the cyber security and advanced networking world, you’re getting that on a mobile device natively from the connection, not anything extra that you have to add on. And then also another term that we’re getting on there now is CASB. And, you know, enabling that device to securely connect to cloud applications and cloud applications connect to each other, all that’s built in with that secure SIM capabilities, which is just either that hardware or that software SIM card that’s plugged into that device.

So we can go to the next slide, please.

Managed Device as a Service (MDaaS) Overview

So we went over some of the enablement and how to get that cellular connection to those devices, but what other capabilities are there and what devices are there? And, you know, I’m an IT team. Now I gotta take on all this extra, you know, cellular capabilities. You know, how how does that affect my day to day operation?

So big service offering out there is MDAS, managed managed device as a service. Or now we’re kinda labeling that managed laptop depending on which avenue you wanna go around.

So what does that include? So you have a monthly fee per the device, that includes things like not only procurement and inventory, but it also includes support, staging, and kitting. So that’s where you take the device from the manufacturer. You get it ready for the user.

Everything is ready to go as soon as they open it out of the box. And then you also offer, you know, warranty and break fix on it. So there’s some caveats there. Obviously, they’re not gonna support anything and everything.

But you do have the the option to where, you know, they’re gonna support if something breaks or something, you know, somebody drops something, something, you know, power goes out, doesn’t turn back on. They’re gonna support that and give you a new device if they can’t fix it remotely as part of this managed device as a service and managed laptop as a service. So some of the benefits we’re seeing that IT teams have recognized are those not only the direct but indirect cost. So lower cost by reduction of the workload.

You know, you don’t have to get a cellular specific, IT person in order to support this. Now you’re leveraging in a true MSP and and teaming with your IT team to handle a lot of these cellular devices, which is pretty specialized if you ask them. One thing that, you know, cyber or IT teams don’t really like is that mobility enabled device, and, you know, supporting that is actually a pretty big pain. And then mitigating the lost and lost devices, you know, that those employees that leave the company that don’t return it, you know, that five finger discount is actually a true, you know, a true problem that a lot of companies have.

So managing this whole entire inventory from procurement to return of that device is super important for companies because not only are they saving money on the support, but they’re saving money that instead of having to procure new devices every time they get an employee, now they only do it if they run out of inventory, but that inventory is accurately managed. And, ultimately, the if the supporting team is very proficient in cellular technology and cellular devices, you’re gonna have a better employee experience. You’re gonna enable them to go either get revenue for the company if they’re a traveling salesperson or if they’re, you know, dispatched at a at a, you know, at a location.

You’re gonna optimize how much time they’re spending on certain tasks. So you’re gonna enable them to do their job more effectively and ultimately give them better support. Better support also enables that device to not be thrown around out of frustration, so you’re gonna have less warranty break fix type stuff. So there’s a lot of lot of pros in that come out of a managed device as a service.

So I know you guys are probably tired of hearing me talk, so I wanna get into the the next stuff here. So if we can go to the next slide.

Introduction to vSIM Technology

So, Tom, you know, I wanna take your expertise in the into, effect here and wanna talk about you know, we we went over SIM, we went over eSIM, but I really wanna get your flavor on v SIM and that new, that new technology that’s out there. What’s the difference between v SIM and the rest of that stuff?

Yeah. So virtual SIM or v SIM as we like to refer to it, the big difference is that we’re taking advantage of the the whole as a service aspect within the industry. Right? So we’ve seen it from, applications and most types of systems where most companies are moving stuff to the cloud.

This technology has actually been around since two thousand eight, and, it was originally designed for that global type traveler. So not having to change SIM cards, not having to pop a SIM card, change a SIM card every time when you’re traveling, internationally.

And then also in different areas even within North America.

A lot of times, you know, as individuals we were traveling, we were carrying a little package of different SIM cards and had a mark so you’d know which one was bought. In this environment, the big difference is that there’s no physical SIMs in any of the devices. Right? So, a, it provides a little bit more security.

So somebody can’t just pop a SIM out of the device and pop pop it into something else, make it work. Everything happens from an auto provision standpoint and automatically looking and then taking advantage of the capability of a multi carrier process. So it’s automatically gonna sample and using AI and algorithms in the background to determine the best signal. A lot of times, we tend to think that, hey, depending upon how strong my signal is tends to tell me how how fast my Internet connection is gonna be.

And a lot of times, that’s just not the case in dealing with multiple carriers. So, it’s a big difference, from a standpoint of how it’s being deployed now, how we’re managing that from a an overall perspective.

And then we still have a lot of situations where even from a chip standpoint or a module standpoint that’s being based in the individual devices, a lot of times there’s still the capability to enable or embed another eSIM or I SIM product along with potential SIM card. So, depending upon the customer’s needs and if they’re really pushing for a always on type of Internet aspect from either a physical location or a mobility standpoint, that’s really where the rubber hits the road on this.

Benefits of vSIM for Travelers

So, Tom, I I gotta ask, you know, you you made that sound, you know, really, really nice. So, like, what if I’m a traveling salesperson or I’m I’m a traveling sales engineer. So let’s say I have this v sim and I’m going from, you know, crossing state lines or I’m going, you know, traveling from one one source to the destination wherever I’m going to perform a demo or discovery call or something like that, how is the v sim gonna help me as I travel to make sure I’m staying online all the time?

Yeah. Absolutely. You know, the the big difference is that the the back end of the system so, again, leveraged by software from the device that’s connecting whether it’s embedded in a physical laptop or it’s a hot spot, physical device that’s actually mounted in a in a vehicle, or even a, router that could be mounted and and placed in a company, the traveling person who’s moving from state to state or internationally or, you know, across any type type of an international border, the the back end is automatically making that shift. So if you’re connected to a particular carrier, how I got into doing a lot of this originally was, started jeeping.

And, I did that because I’ve been in tech for thirty years and I wanted to get away from technology. Right? I wanted to disconnect. And, ironically, now I’m back into the position where I’m I’m pretty much connected ninety five, ninety eight percent of the time.

It will automatically search and connect to the next carrier that’s in that particular area and then verifies the information on the background.

Some of the newer products also have a signal scan technology where if you don’t like your connection, you can literally hit the button. It’ll go out and search and then connect to a new carrier, verify the back end and and do that.

So from a Did you label the easy button?

Yeah. The easy button. Right. Yeah. Although, you know, I think Home Office Depot already had the easy button.

So, but, yeah, same type of technology. Right? So, our our idea is that it it’s it’s designed and built so that you can actually make that change without, an individual user having to make that change.

When I’m flying around the country and going to different places, literally, I walk off the airplane, I turn on my hot spot. I I don’t have to worry about who my cell phone carrier is or what’s happening from that standpoint. I automatically connect via Wi Fi to my individual device, and it automatically seeks out the best network and connects me.

That is a great segue to where I wanted to go next, which is the international capability. So I know we a lot of the stuff we talk domestically between AT and T, Verizon, T Mobile, but, you know, that the exact scenario to where you have a traveling person that goes overseas just like you mentioned, Is is it just the same easy button that connects from the US based carrier to an international carrier?

Yeah. We’ve got a number of different plans that are built and designed around the business side. So if it’s just a user that’s gonna be in North America, then they have North America coverage. If they’re traveling to the EU, UK, there’s a plan that goes for that.

There’s a plan for Asia Pac and then there’s a plan for global. So for those real power users that are traveling around the world and doing all of those things, they can sign up with their global plan and it’ll automatically seek out the best carrier in that particular area. For customers that are maybe making a change and they’re only going over for a period of time, and we’ve had a lot of situations like that where, hey, I’m gonna be traveling overseas for, say, two or three weeks, then we can change the plan for them. So when they go over and then they can contact us and let us know that they’re coming back.

Global Connectivity Solutions for Travelers

So it’s really the flexibility of the customer. We’ve got a customer right now who we’re working, with, and they they had twenty five users that travel internationally all the time. They’re like, we’re having major problems because, again, when they land and they get overseas, they can’t connect. So they all have a hot spot that minute they walk off the plane with their global carrier, the the global plan, literally, they they fire that device up and they’re connected when they land.

Is that that hot spot, that little orange guy in the picture there in the top right under customer devices? So that’s that little hockey puck?

Yeah. That’s the well, yeah, it looks like a hockey puck. So that’s one of the devices. And then there’s also a four g five g one that is a little bit more rectangular and square, which, does the same thing.

I love this thing. That was a loaded question. But I love this thing. So, like, this thing connect to any carrier, just having the car connect to it like a Wi Fi, and I can definitely attest to everything that Tom’s saying there.

Alright. There’s There’s over three hundred LTE carriers that are in the back end of the plan. So, from a global perspective, if they’re traveling and doing that, then, yeah, it it’ll automatically connect to any of those carriers depending upon where they’re at.

AI in Carrier Selection

Awesome. Okay. Let’s move on to the to the next slide here. I know you mentioned a little bit about the AI. So everything you know, we’re always interested about stuff that powered by AI and the big AI pushed by Telarus.

So I wanted to expand a little bit on this. How is the AI picking which carriers to choose in specific areas? Does it just say, hey. This is the nearest tower, so I’m gonna connect to it, or is it a little more sophisticated than that?

Yeah. So, actually, it it does start from that standpoint. So it’s gonna establish a connection.

Every single one of the modules that’s in the device so when we look at this slide, you’ll see on the left, without CMO and and Infinite Wireless, every individual device like my cell phone, my Apple Watch, all of those devices are specific. Right? They have a they have a card to attach to a particular carrier. In in our back end, it’s actually going to, from the module standpoint, there’s actually two radios in it.

So the first radio goes out and establishes to the closest tower and says, hey. Here I am. And then it goes into the back end and says, is this the right carrier that I should connect to? That’s where the AI and the algorithms kick in and it looks at a smattering of everything that’s happening within that particular area and what’s been connected in that area.

So it will then determine, you may end up connecting to a carrier with fifty percent, v sim or a sim signal strength, if you will, but it has a better throughput and and bandwidth than it has with one that has seventy five or a hundred. So it does that in the back end and then it automatically connects the device. And then it’s constantly looking in the background. Right?

Managing that, looking at those connections, making sure that you’re connected to the best one.

Alright. So that’s way more sophisticated than what I was originally thinking. That that’s cool. Okay.

Exploring CMO Product Devices

Let’s go to the next one.

And one more for me.

So so I know one of the things we wanted to mention were I know we had a little, little snippet on the available devices. So, can you touch on some of the devices that people wouldn’t think of that would fall under the the CMO products? And where and also I wanna sorry. Second that is, where is CMO going with the with available devices?

So, we’re where we’re going with the available devices. So between between us and and CIMO, looking at the the business to business aspect. So, there’s other this is a good smattering of some of the devices that are out there. I’m gonna start from the left.

We talked about the hockey puck and the Solus five g hotspot. So that’s a four g five g product. Ironically, everybody’s pushing for five g. Right?

Everybody wants five g. We all think five g is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Five g is is very similar to, in a wireless environment. So when you’re connecting to a Wi Fi product, you have a two point four or five gigahertz.

Right? So the closer you are to wherever that endpoint is, or where the router is itself, it’s connecting, then the five g signal is great. But when you’re dealing in a longer distance and a longer ratio away from wherever that hub is, the two point four gigahertz delivers a better connection and for a longer period a longer stretch away from that. Those five g hotspots, I I would say eighty percent of the time I’m connected to a four g network.

We’ve got different types of routers that, the ProConnect is one example that’s here. We have another router that actually sits in the product set where it has two of these v sim modules in it and creates as close to an always on connection as could possibly be had today. So it’ll actually connect to two different wireless carriers and then also has additional capability for additional WAN ports on the back. So somebody who’s mounting this internally, from a a network standpoint and putting it in a physical environment, you can also extend the antennas that are on these devices and use either higher gain antennas that work inside, which is similar to the SURF and turf that you see there.

The high gain antennas on that but actually, when we were at the partner summit and we were downstairs in the Opryland, we had all of, several of these devices deployed right there. And the surf and turf downstairs, we had full bars, which nobody was getting in that environment, and we were able to pull twenty five down on the average and twelve to thirteen up. So we were able to take connections, make connections, do everything, hand off the Wi Fi that was in those devices. We’ve also got, other embedded products within the Acer TravelMate that’s being released in October, October, November time frame.

So the CMO inside is automatically being deployed in those particular devices. So you can get those and then sign up for a plan or we can sell those as well. And then tablets, we’re seeing a lot of use in, a, in hospitality and, b, in the medical environment, specifically around these particular devices where they they need a, like you were talking about earlier, the the capability for products that’s I I we’ve become a very throwaway technology. Like, we we plan obsolescence between two and three years on a lot of these types of devices.

So as they continue to drop in price, even though the technology is getting greater and greater in these devices, the the fact of people dropping them in those types of environments and having to be able to replace them from a use perspective at a lower cost really makes a big difference.

And then last but not least on the on the left there on the bottom, the CMO inside. So think about really anything that, you think automakers, you think, different devices, thinking about different SD WAN companies that we’re talking to and stuff like that where they can actually they’re they’ve embedded SIM technology, but now they’re looking at embedding the actual chipset into those devices so that they can take advantage of using this type of technology on the back end and not be reticent to an individual SIM card. I think the other thing to remember with SIM cards is, you know, it’s kinda like the old phone book.

Right? The minute it’s printed, that’s all that there is to it. There is it it’s a read only memory. There is no access to be able to update or make changes to the individual SIM cards.

Whereas when you’re doing it from more from an app service standpoint and everything’s happening from a cloud standpoint, anything and everything is available from an update capability, additional carriers, those types of things. So you’re not limited by the scope of just what’s on that particular SIM card.

Thanks, Tom. Yeah. Thanks for not, ending with surf and turf. I don’t know about everybody else here, but as soon as I heard that a few times, I start getting pretty hungry. But, but, yeah, let’s, let’s move to the next slide. I know I know I wanna give Jason some time to talk here.

Transitioning to Laptop as a Service

So so, Jason, before we get started on the actual slides themselves, I was wondering if you could kinda detail the difference between the legacy MDAS offering on metal on metal, that we all know and love to laptop, device as a service. So I know it I know it kinda makes sense by the name, but if you could detail a little bit of the differences, that’d be great.

Yeah. Certainly. So I I think it’s an important place to start. So, you know, anyone that’s familiar with Mattel on the wireless side, we launched mobile device as a service or MDAS, around twenty twenty, you know, right around, the time of the pandemic, and it has been a very successful program for us. So really just to kind of give a high level summary, it it’s full life cycle management on the equipment, maybe even taking a step back for for those that may not be familiar with with METEL Mobility.

We are a wireless wholesaler. We have contracts with all the major carriers and can provide, true cellular service from your ATT, Verizon, T Mobile, as well as the METEL SIM card, which I’m gonna talk about more here. When it comes to equipment, we we launched MDAS as as really that that equipment life cycle management where we’re providing the device, be it a smartphone, an Apple iPhone, an Android, tablet, whatever it might be. And it comes packaged with really everything end to end.

So, obviously, the device itself, the configuration, the staging and kitting, which I don’t have enough time to kinda go into how loaded of a term that is. But the point is we work with our customers to understand what needs to be done to these devices to get them from our warehouse into your end users’ hands. And and that has, again, been really successful. Customers have really gravitated towards the, I don’t wanna deal with this.

I don’t like devices coming in to to in house for us to program, get MDM loaded, security programs, and and all of these things. So we’ve really taken the customer, the IT team, out of that equation and really started the automate process. So it comes with a lot of different value adds. So kind of, jumping into to where we’re where we are today and what we’re talking about today.

So this laptop as a service.

Sorry. Before we get into the Sure. Actually, I wanna touch into everything that you just mentioned, and I I wanted to go to this slide right here while you talk about laptop as a service.

Perfect. Yeah. So so just just to give a little bit of background of how we got here, this was actually a problem we needed to solve internally.

So, again, being able to provide devices, smartphones. When we have a new hire, it was always day one. Here’s your new smartphone.

You want an Android or do you want an Apple? It was a really simple, you know, conversation, and here’s your device. Day one, every new hire was getting them. We were finding it difficult to turn laptops around as quickly as our smartphones.

So we’d be in the situation where we’d have new hires that didn’t have, laptops day one or even week one. So we started looking around and really found that this was a bit of a gap in the market. There have been manufacturers, laptop manufacturers that have tried to go to market with this. There was a a disconnect on turnaround time.

So so we actually went out with with one of our customers and and, large retail, over eight hundred locations, nationwide, and and we talked to them about their experience with laptops. And their average turnaround time from getting a new hire to getting them a laptop was around two weeks, and and that’s just not acceptable. So we went and partnered. We talked with a lot of different laptop manufacturers, and we landed on a partnership with Dell where we’re gonna bring all of the operations in house.

We’re gonna bring all of the inventory.

We’re gonna have a variety of devices to choose from, and we’ll be leveraging the experience, the success we’ve had on the mobile device side over to the laptop. So, to to Jason’s point, really, this for those that are familiar with MDAS, this is gonna look really familiar. So we’re really mirroring the program and kind of going left to right. You know, we we are removing the CapEx, which is huge for customers. Everyone knows what laptops cost.

And, you know, to the point earlier, the four, the five year cycles that people are trying to get out of laptops just isn’t really realistic anymore, at least on average. Right? So being able to take the CapEx out of the equation, move into more of an OpEx, which is where all of our customers, the majority of our customers, have moved to on the device side, it made sense to to obviously move that over on the laptop side as well. So being able to do an OpEx from the device, the service, the accessories, and really have a a end to end, out of the box solution.

When it comes to configuration, again, not enough time to talk about that today, but the point is we work with our customers and and understand how are these being used today. What type of security measures do you have in place today? What can we add or what can we augment to to make these devices more secure?

And then the big piece to the puzzle is these will be connected laptops, and these will be with the Mattel single SIM. So the single SIM for us is our, multi carrier SIM card. This is a global solution. So this SIM card can connect to over six hundred and fifty carriers across a little over a hundred and seventy countries.

And really similar to to Tom earlier, this is built based on where the device will go. So if your, you know, if your customers are based in the United States and they never travel, we build it for, you know, the the North America zone, which has access to all the the North America carriers. If you have services outside of the country, there’s different zones that we’ve built that have the different carriers for, you know, Asia Pac, Europe, and all of these other countries across the globe. So these devices will come, pre installed with that five g connection.

And then, you know, a huge value add on the mobile side is coming over to the laptop side, and that is that break fix, component.

So if something happens to this device, we’re replacing the device.

We do this with a an advanced RMA. So we’re shipping out that new device, again, kitted down with their specs, right out to that end user. And then we take that, that broken device back into to the warehouse and remove all of their information, wipe that, device where there’s no corporate personal information remaining.

And then a huge piece to the puzzle is the portal. So, again, Mattel’s Bruin portal that’s been around forever, you know, managing environments from wireline to wireless is clearly translating here as well. And and and this really becomes important when we start to talk to our larger customers that are using ticketing systems like ServiceNow, Zendesk, a variety of of other ticketing systems where we’ll do a full blown integration with their system into the Bruin platform. And we also work with HR. We can bring HR feeds in. And what that’ll enable us to do is, again, trim that timeline down to where a new hire’s experience, with Mattel will be, you know, getting that connected device, smartphone, getting that connected laptop, having a bag with the company logo shipped to them so that on their first day, you know, they they get that that experience of getting that new device, which is specific and and tailored to them.

Again, kinda going through the differences here as you can see what’s available today, what’s out in the market. This is unique, very unique. You’re not seeing this out in the marketplace today. A lot of the times our customers are working directly with your HPs, your Lenovos, your Dells, and then if they’re connecting them working with a carrier.

If they’re not connecting them, like a lot of us have done, probably do, connecting to public Wi Fi is a huge risk.

Over forty percent of of, users using public Wi Fi have been, hit with with, you know, some sort of virus or or or ransomware, things like that.

In fact, twenty twenty three was, the worst year, for for that type of of activity. So, you know, going to Starbucks and jumping on the the Wi Fi for a few hours while it is convenient, very risky. So we’re taking taking our customers out of that equation and and providing a connected laptop. And for what it’s worth, if anyone’s had a connected laptop, it is it is such a nice experience. Certainly, we’ve all traveled with with hot spots and things like that. One less thing to do. You turn it on, and it’s and it’s automatically connected.

Streamlining Employee Onboarding with Connected Devices

So, Jason, if you don’t mind me interrupting real quick, the one thing I do wanna hit on is simplicity of everything that you just talked about from the life cycle of a new employee onboarded to them getting this device, and then what an what an administrator can see on the back end on the usage statistics. So you mentioned, hey, you know, going to a Starbucks, getting on the Wi Fi, you know, if you could control the the cellular network and, you know, run through a VPN or something like that, you’re in a lot better situation than getting on to some public Wi Fi. But what can I see on the back end on how much data somebody’s using? Like, can I tell if they’re using it for personal usage? But also, can you tell us, like, a story on okay. I’m a new employee coming into a company. They added me to the to active directory.

What happens then to make it easy on everybody involved in order to get this device to the end user?

Yeah. Great great questions, and I’ll kinda work my way backwards. So once they’re added into AD, we have that file flow over to our portal where that’s initiating an order. And we have some parameters built in.

What’s the hire date? What model are they looking for? Like I said, we’ll have some different options there. But, you know, high level, that device is ordered, kitted, provisioned, shipped out to that end user.

So his experience their experience should be, you know, day one, here’s my package. Like I said, branded, laptop bags, company branded bags with their phones, with their with their device. When it comes to data usage, I think you bring up a great point. Some of the customers I’ve started talking to about this, although, you know, we use Wi Fi today.

We’re not really sure where to start. You know? Do we need ten gigs of data? Do we need a hundred gigs of data?

What’s great about our solution is this single SIM will pool across all users. So a lot of these customers that we started talking to, if they have, you know, five hundred, a thousand, however many employees they might have, we can start to kinda look at that and say, you know, we can go with a five hundred meg plan, a one gig, a three gig. The point is just like on the wireless side, the traditional wireless side, we’re managing and monitoring that usage. So this is maybe a new solution.

Again, not using connected laptops today. We can start at x. Right? At this much data for every user, after a month, after two months, we start to kinda get a a better idea of what your usage looks like, and we optimize the plans based on that.

So, again, this translates over from the wireless side. Our customers you know, we have customers that come to us that have been using unlimited plans and and really kind of steer away from data pooling. But when we can come in and provide that overarching management and optimize plans, the end result is our customers are getting the amount of data that they need per billing cycle versus, you know, overbuying, underbuying, dealing with data overages, and things like that. So, you know, again, doing this at scale and being able to roll this out to to to to the larger customers and larger groups of of, end users, you’re gonna have a larger pool, and that translates to more flexibility for those for those high end users.

Comprehensive Laptop as a Service Offering

Awesome. And, and just for clarification, a part of this laptop as a service, the the hardware is included, so the actual laptop, the connectivity is included, and then also the whole life cycle and management is included?

That’s right. Yeah. So so all of the support, any issues with the device, whether it’s manufacturer warranty, break fix like I talked about earlier, questions, invoicing questions, troubleshooting, end user support, everything flows into Mattel.

One thing that you see up on on the slide here, accessory bundles, we put a lot of thought into the different types of bundles that we might be seeing from from customers and what type of of devices and services they’ll need. So we have a lot of options there.

You know, an extra screen. You’ve seen these little portable, additional screens that you can put on laptops, docking stations, keyboards, etcetera. So we’re gonna bring all of that in house so they really don’t have to look elsewhere. They don’t have to go to Amazon and get a keyboard. Right? Everything will be, will be available from Mattel.

Why do we lose Jason?

Jason, I’m not sure if we lost you or if you’re just on mute. I can see you’re on mute on my screen.

Can you park on, Jason?

Can you all hear me?

There you go.

Yep. I I don’t know. Maybe I moved the wrong way.

But yeah. So I I I have not gotten a chance to see the questions. I don’t know if there there’s any questions that have come in. What I will say, this is very high level today.

Upcoming Launch and Training Opportunities

Anyone that’s attended one of Graham, Graham’s Ascend, you probably saw me, start giving teasers away, the one slide that, hey. This is coming soon. Well, we’re now in a position where we’re we’re gonna be launching this in October. So a lot of the finer details and and a lot more is gonna come out, you know, when we go live with Telarus on this. But we really wanted to get in front of you today and and kind of provide that sneak peek high level. But October is right around the corner, so we’re excited.

Definitely, we’ll be more in-depth trainings about, you know, how this works, what this looks like, how do we position this with customers, things like that. But in the meantime, you know, please reach out to me, reach out to your, agent manager here at at Mattel, and we can provide, you know, any other information. Yes. We can certainly talk with customers about this even though we’re not live yet today. We are talking with a lot of our internal customers, and, frankly, that’s really helped to shape the program. So if you have questions, if you have opportunities, just wanna learn more, reach out to us at MedTel, and we’ll be happy to to dig in a little deeper.

Thanks, Jason. Great job. It’s fascinating technology, and it’s really game changing in terms of what this can do, not only for our partners, but for our partners themselves. This is something very new and very different that they can offer with a wide range of applications. Thanks for helping to point that out today. It’s Jason McKenna from, MetTel.

Tom Shinners, CEO at Infinite Wireless. I mistakenly spoke your title earlier. I will more to apologize for that.

No. No worries.

Tom, you did a great job today. And, Jason, you too, as well as answering all of these questions that came through the chat. We’ve had a a wide variety of questions, many of them already answered. But I did wanna pick up on one thing here at the end because, Jason Kaufman, you mentioned this at the end.

Key Selling Points for Partners

Not all of this is fully ready to be launched in the marketplace yet, but it’s important that partners get the word out to their clients. Can we just retalk about the, the top three talking points on this and why it is important that customers understand this is coming for their clients? I know Zachary Schechter was saying, can I just take my desktop out and do it that way? No, Zachary.

It’s a laptop.

Talk about the three selling points that partners really should not be able to understand and explain now to their clients.

And, McKenna, I think that was for you, actually.

Oh, sorry about that. Yeah. I I I think the main thing, you know, being able to pull our customers out of the spiderweb of multiple vendors, trying to figure out how to go to market with something like this, how to roll this out to their end users. This solution has been in the works at Mattel for years, vetting out various partners and and, you know, Dell actually rose to the top, as as the best launch partner for Mattel. But being able to to be that single source, single vendor, leverage the automation that we’ve built with the with the MDAS program.

Again, keeping your information, your data, your network secure is really key, especially with with what we’re seeing today, over public Wi Fi. So I think, you know, those points and and, again, just a a fully managed turnkey solution, which makes it a lot easier for our customers to understand and and and, you know, deploy across their end user base.

Tom, I wanna go back to, your offering as well with Infinite Wireless.

And this is a a multi carrier solution and situation here.

Describe if you would, again, the advantages for partners as they talk to their clients of why this technology will unleash just astounding productivity among their, employees, especially those that have to do a lot of traveling or work remotely.

Advantages of Multi-Carrier Solutions

Yeah. I I think the, realistically, the the the aspect of it that’s so attractive, especially in the fact that you don’t have to align with any one particular carrier. We’ve got, I’ll use a a customer we’ve got that’s a banking institution. They’ve got thirty one locations.

Of those locations, they’re in three different cell carrier cell carrier territories, which is the primary supposedly for that particular area. And so they were trying to manage three different plans, again, with how they’ve had to design things within their infrastructure and being able to mount external antennas to be able to pull this in. But being able to manage those signals and if a tower goes down, something happens at particular area, they’re still locked into that particular carrier. The the beauty of the product set and the way it’s designed here is that now, you’re you’re not at the, the mercy of any one particular carrier, especially in a situation where towers I use this example all the time with people.

I think we all know it. And if we’re working from home or working from different areas or working remotely, when school gets out and everybody starts hitting the networks, then the networks tend to start to dwindle in terms of speed and capability.

The product sets have innate, built in design so that will automatically be watching for that and then can automatically move and switch between carriers. So giving that flexibility, you know, it’s it’s aggregating services and capabilities for customers so that they don’t have to worry about that from a management standpoint.

And then on the back end from a support standpoint, again, if they’re having particular problems with a particular area, we can also help, implement over the back end from that AI and algorithm standpoint to say, hey, you know, yeah, this may be the strongest carrier which it’s automatically connecting to, but we can help preset that information so that it will connect to a different carrier in those types of environments. So gives a lot of flexibility to be able to make those changes on the fly within thirty seconds to a minute and a half.

Flexibility and Security in Connectivity

That flexibility alone makes it really unique from that standpoint. And, again, not having to worry about which carrier we we for loads of us, I think most of us on this call have all traveled at one time or another and we’ve all run into situations where your cell phone just isn’t working. And so, oh, well, you know what? If I jump on the public Wi Fi or whatever, then, you know, I I can connect and because I’ve got Wi Fi calling.

As Jason McKenna said earlier, that that’s one of the big problems within this industry currently today is that we’ve made public WiFi so accessible in so many different areas now. But at the end of the day, it’s just not secure.

I have not connected to a public WiFi in over two years. I like the part that Jason was showing and, I have one that I’ve I’ve the same one I’ve used for two years and I’ve had no problems with it. When I’m traveling, it’s also a phone bank. So it’s, you know, it’s a battery backup so that if my phone is I forgot to charge my phone or if I’m on a plane and I was using it for the whole time and I get to the other end, then I can plug my phone and it’ll charge my phone. It gives a lot of flexibility from that mobile traveler from that standpoint. And, that that’s that’s where we see, you know, a lot of customers really taking advantage of it.

Future Technologies and Network Enhancements

And as you mentioned earlier in the chat, satellite coming as well?

Yeah. So within the next twelve to eighteen months, so we’re looking at, along with CIMO, how we can start to embed some additional technologies. Currently, and and I get this question. We didn’t have it, I don’t think, in the chat today. But, yeah, it it’s a sealed network. So currently in today’s environment, the only devices that work within the network are developed and designed either with the chipset or by, manufacturing partners that work with us and CIMO.

We’re looking at embedding the satellite tape type capabilities and technology as well as, embedding, utilizing embedded eSIM and iSIM products, going into the future here. So as this continues to grow and the as a service model continues to grow and we’re all seeing it in every aspect of the industry, we’re preparing to be able to meet those types of needs so that yeah. As we continue to move into the future, it’s not necessarily, hey. I have to buy a new device that’ll connect to the network. I may have a device that then we can retrofit specifically to be able to connect to the network.

It is astounding what we can offer these days and how these technologies continue to converge.

Tom Shinner, CEO from Infinite Wireless. Thank you very much for that. Jason McKenna, MetTel. We appreciate you being here. Great presentations.

Jason Kaufman, from Telarus. We lost you for just a moment, but you’re back. Sum this up for us today.

Yeah. Thank you for everybody for for joining. And, yeah, as as you can see, the the market is moving. You know, cellular is getting, beefed up from an structure perspective.

Leveraging Cellular Advancements for Business

So how can you leverage that from a business, not only to make yourself more secure, but also how to, you know, help your IT teams and also your accounting teams by cost cutting and helping with support. So I think you found two really good suppliers here on this one. Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Jason.

But, yeah, let us know if there’s any other questions.

Excellent. Thanks, Jason. Thanks, everybody. Terrific presentation today.