Telecoms expert shares his five top tips on investing in connectivity to boost growth

A leading telecommunications expert has shared his top five tips on avoiding the common pitfalls many businesses fall victim to when investing in connectivity solutions.

Roy Shelton, CEO of managed services provider Connectus Business Solutions warned that choosing cheap IoT connectivity often leads to hidden costs and performance shortfalls.

His comments come after a new report from Eseye warned that a focus on low upfront costs is often a false economy.

It found that 68% of senior IT decision-makers agree that cheap connectivity providers do not represent a good long-term investment.

Here Mr Shelton shares his five top tips on how to best to approach the issue.

Assess full TCO,  it’s not just about the initial price , think about the costs of including downtime, maintenance, and vendor management.

By deploying secure, fully managed infrastructure from the start, businesses avoid risks and operational overhead later and therefore align with a TCO-aware strategy.

Link connectivity to revenue and service levels – because outages directly impact income and customer satisfaction. Right-size and future-proof connectivity.

Oversize your connection: the smallest I would suggest is 100 Mbps but a 1 Gbps leased line isn’t much more expensive, but always aim for 99.999% availability.

Control operational and data roaming costs – for example use eSIMs to switch to cost-effective local networks, which can mean a saving of between 60–80%.

Ensure service resilience with redundancy and think about using diverse carriers and backup lines with auto-failover to avoid outages.

Mitigate future network risk – ensure your devices are future-proof amid transitions like the 3G shutdown. Invest in robust cybersecurity and managed infrastructure.

Consider secure firewalls, high-speed components, and business-grade managed services.

Adopt ultrafast fibre optical – this provides connectivity for performance and cloud readiness, enables smart work, seamless cloud and VOIP integration, and fast, reliable operations.

Also, consider how a network and connectivity is going to be monitored and supported. Real-time monitoring for performance and a graphical representation of both the active and passive network is vital for proactive support.

For more information see www.connectus.org.uk