How can I maintain cellular uptime?

From properly installing your device to identifying potential interference, here are some tips to help you maintain your uptime.

For nearly every business with cellular-connected devices, uptime is key to their success. This is because uptime determines whether their equipment is able to function, which in turn affects whether or not they're able to turn a profit. Unfortunately, there are many things that can negatively affect uptime like antenna placement, location issues, and interference, to name a few.

However, there are things you can do to increase your chances of maintaining uptime for your device. Today we're going to be talking about what those tips are and why they can help your device so that you don’t have to ask yourself “Why do I have to keep resetting my router?” or "Why is my service so slow?". From properly installing your device to identifying potential interference, here are some tips to help you maintain your uptime:

  • Properly install the cellular device. This means placing your antenna's 6-8" apart, on top of a metal cabinet, vertically mounted.
  • Ensure the device is in a secure location. Making sure that your device is in a secure location will mitigate the risk of someone misusing the device or unplugging it.
  • Check the signal strength of your device once you connect it. For customers who use OptConnect devices, you can log in to our cloud-based management portal, Summit, to view the signal strength of your devices in real-time to see if they're able to get the best possible connectivity.
  • Choose the right carrier for your location. You’ll want to verify that the cellular carrier you are using is best for your specific location. You can do this by talking with people near the install location to see if one carrier performs better in that location than another. For OptConnect customers, you can contact our 24/7 Customer Care team and they can help perform a site survey.
  • Identify any potential interference. Make sure to verify that the location of your device is not near anything that gives off radio frequency interference (i.e., freezers, refrigerators, etc.)

In addition to these tips to help increase your uptime, it's also crucial that your connectivity provider has the right support in place to help you in case your issue is beyond these tips.

With OptConnect, you get 24/7 support, 365 days a year, so that if your device goes down day or night, you have someone to call to get you back up and running. Having a great support team behind you is just one more way to make sure you maintain a good uptime.