Unfortunately its not so easy, using “pre-certified” modules helps the certification process, but it by no means makes it easy or cheap. In-fact, companies still must spend tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to certify devices that use pre-certified modules. Additionally, very few carriers accept the industry standard certification (PTCRB) and insist on their own additional layers of certification making the process of creating new products that can work across many carriers and networks extremely time consuming.

The certification process for cellular devices is a joke and is one of the main impediments to the success and growth of the IoT/M2M industry. We work with a vendor who use a pre-certified module in their newest M2M gateway, and since starting the certification process in the fall of 2011 we can only use the device on a single carrier.

I hope this helps any readers out there who think think pre-certified modules make the process simple and quick!

Still good news that we’re getting other players on the market besides the usual companies that are in the module business.

– Jim Wert
VP Engineering, M2M
ILS Technology
jwert@ilstechnology.com