Hi ZombieC.
A Verizon B2B account is pretty interesting. You sign a couple of agreements via a sales guy who becomes your account exec for Verizon. A B2B account theoretically allows you to provision your own devices adding and subtracting devices at will on/off the Verizon network. As the network manager for your own little cellular kingdom you pick the "group" and the data plan for that group to share. The two groups consist of data quantity plans with overage rates. Group 1 starts at 1MB runs up to 150MB a month which an unlimited number units can share. Group 2 starts at 250MB and runs up to 10GB. You assign which group your devices live in and share.
To clarify "theoretically" this is all doable and done thru the B2B "management console" EXCEPT the difference between G1,G2,G3, and LTE is great enough that Verizon hasn't figured out how to allow management console to work with LTE yet. They expect around the end of the year. The console works fine with all the prior comm schemes.
Additionally; You get dynamic addressing with everything I've explained above. No doubt I could've used a service to keep track of the shifting addresses or come up with a scheme where the field units phone-home but that limits where I can talk to them from if "home" changes. This would all take some time to setup too and I was working on a very short time schedule. So I decided to cut to the chase and go with static IP addresses. Verizon charges you $500 upfront for static IPs, all you want. I went that route as it makes a lot of things way easier.
Also the management console does work for the Verizon B2B network currently IF and only IF you opt for a Verizon "private network". This is considered many times more secure than the standard network because they setup a routing tables and run everything thru their routers as apposed to 'any' routers. They also work this thru a specific router you designate on your 'business' end. Apparently it actually takes a lot of work. It takes about two months for Verizon techs to setup. It also has a one time charge of, you guessed it, $500. I did not go for this as currently I have only one device on the system. As I add more Things I will likely take it all over to a private network for the added security.
A last point is you also sort of get a specific tech guy assigned to you. He's usually given to you by your corp contact guy. BTW My guy was astoundingly helpful and bent over backwards WAAAAY backwards to help me meet my strict time deadline. Doing a bunch of work from home hours after working hours for me.
SIM or APN I started this whole thing by going to the local Verizon Store where they sold me an addition to my personal phone plan increasing my data plan and handing me a SIM for the Red Lion 6921. It did not work happily and I ended up figuring out I needed what B2B offered. My account guy was going to send me a new SIM but instead after a bunch of after hours work changed the SIM card I had in possession to take it into the B2B network and what he would've sent me saving us another day.
I hear occasional horror stories about Verizon Support but I have to say the excellent quality support I have
always received from them has me solidly in their camp. For more than a decade they have provided me with outstanding support. Everything from a kid racking up a $500 texting bill (they promptly retroactively changed my plan saving me $400) to dealing with phone failures, etc., etc., always fixed everything quickly for me and often in surprising and money saving ways I hadn't even known about.
Contact me and I'll pass on a name to you.
Keith Cress
kcress -
