Jola’s immediate priority this year is to accelerate partner growth through the maximisation of ‘bigger and better’ IoT and mobile data deals, according to CEO Adrian Sunderland.
Wireless Logic acquired Jola in July 2022 to consolidate routes to market through a focused UK channel, and supercharged by the parent company’s additional resources Jola has embarked on an action plan to deliver partners’ IoT and mobile data deals which have reached ‘eye-watering’ levels, says Sunderland. New research by Jola points up the scale of the opportunity with mobile data rated as the fastest growing connectivity sector in the world. Furthermore, Sunderland believes that every partner has at least one IoT or M2M opportunity in their existing customer base.
“Jola added over 200 new resellers in 2023,” stated Sunderland. “Resellers are looking for high recurring margin products to sell to existing customers and mobile data fits the bill. Big companies have partnered with us and the pipeline they have generated is eye-watering. In the next five months our efforts will be going into helping them close and deliver these deals.”
Sunderland also noted that Jola is leveraging Wireless Logic’s wider solution set to add new products and features to its mobile and SIP Manager portals. Jola also provides 100 per cent real-time DDOS protection for its public IP address space using CloudFlare and now blocks thousands of DDOS attacks and intrusion attempts every month. As part of the Wireless Logic group it also has a 24x7x365 Security Operations Centre. “We’ve leveraged traction from channel-ready versions of some of Wireless Logic’s most innovative products,” added Sunderland. “Resellers are enjoying ARPUs of £10-£15 on projects involving hundreds and thousands of SIMs. So it’s not surprising that many of them are trying to add as much contracted IoT to their base as possible and look like an IoT company rather than a generalist.”
Resellers are looking for high recurring margin products to sell to existing customers and mobile data fits the bill
Sunderland highlighted that the public sector is ‘red hot’ for IoT contracts, and he pointed to sizeable opportunities within the retail, logistics, healthcare and private transport sectors. “Jola was recently approached by a large metropolitan council to bid for a transport project,” noted Sunderland. “We never sell direct so engaged one of our partners which then won a multi-million-pound contract to supply tracking, scheduling and communication services to a variety of transport operations over several years. Also, we recently completed a public transport project with one of our partners where we delivered a private mobile data network that was interconnected into the customer’s IoT application in AWS cloud, in parallel to delivering a 5G public mobile data network. The whole project was subject to strict cybersecurity policies.”
Switch off opportunities
Another hotbed of IoT and mobile opportunities has been ignited by the 2025 PSTN switch off which has sparked much of Jola’s innovation roadmap as it seeks to plug gaps exposed where fixed line upgrades are either insufficient, unavailable or not the right option. “Not every location where PSTN exists would necessarily need broadband, yet all the industry standard solutions assume that the switch off means fibre broadband and VoIP,” observed Sunderland. “So we leveraged our experience of delivering mission critical mobile data together with our wholesale IP telephony capabilities and created a single box PSTN replacement product that can be installed anywhere and costs less per month than the PSTN line it is replacing.”
Another fixed line alternative opportunity was spotlighted in December last year when Ofcom reported that full fibre is available to 56 per cent of homes while 5G is available to 85 per cent. “We’ve seen 5G compatible tariffs drop in price along with 5G devices to the point where 5G and LTE-A services can be a viable and cost-effective alternative to fixed line in many customer situations,” added Sunderland.
The benefits of adopting IoT and mobile solutions versus the standard approach is also clear for all to see when you consider that IoT and M2M EBITDA multiples can be as high as 28x versus more typical IT and telecom valuations of 8x-10x, noted Sunderland. He also attaches multiples of value to Jola’s staff share scheme which also holds much promise (every employee hired before its acquisition by Wireless Logic held share options) . “This has created a collaborative atmosphere and everyone is pushing in the same direction to help partners deliver bigger and better mobile deals,” stated Sunderland.