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Build vs. Buy

What It Really Costs to Build  a Connected Device in the Trucking Industry.

Building cellular connectivity in-house adds certification, carrier management, provisioning, cloud infrastructure, and long-term maintenance to a hardware program. Buying a pre-certified connectivity module transfers most of that work to a vendor. This paper quantifies the six cost categories a Bill of Materials leaves out and gives the criteria for deciding which path fits your product. 

Connectivity for the next generation of commercial vehicles.

The truck is becoming increasingly connected but much of that connectivity still stops at the cab. Batteries, trailers, reefers, tires, brakes and other critical systems increasingly need their own path to the cloud, often across fleets that travel through different networks, regions and coverage conditions.

For manufacturers building these products, the challenge isn't simply adding cellular connectivity. It's doing it without taking on years of certification, carrier management, provisioning, security and infrastructure work that has little to do with the product they're actually trying to differentiate. 

    Why does the Bill of Materials understate the real cost of a connected device?

    A Bill of Materials captures component and manufacturing cost. It does not capture the cost of making a device connect, stay secure, stay updated, and stay supported for the ten or more years it sits in the field. 


    A $50 BOM tells you what the device costs to assemble. It tells you nothing about what it costs to operate 20,000 of them across a truck fleet spanning three continents - or to keep those devices connected, secure and updated as trucks cross carrier networks, borders and coverage gaps.  

Blues calls the complete view the New BOM. It has six categories:

    Why this matters in trucking

    Commercial vehicle products create an unusually demanding connectivity environment. Assets move constantly, remain in service for years, cross network and geographic boundaries, and are often installed or serviced far from the engineering team that built them. A connectivity decision that looks inexpensive on the BOM can become costly once provisioning, field service, certification and long-term fleet management are included. 

How much does IoT device certification cost? 

Certification is the cost most often underestimated, because it is charged per market and per radio, and because failures are common. 

A connected device sold in North America and Europe typically needs FCC (United States), ISED (Canada), CE/RED (Europe), and PTCRB (North American cellular carriers). Each has its own test protocol and its own laboratory fees.

Using a pre-certified cellular module changes the math directly. According to MarkReady’s 2026 cost analysis, FCC certification for a device built on a pre-certified module runs $3,000 to $10,000, while a custom single-band radio design runs $8,000 to $20,000 and a multi-radio device runs $15,000 to $30,000. Roughly half of devices fail EMC testing on the first attempt, adding $2,000 to $10,000 per retest cycle plus redesign time.

PTCRB adds $16,000 to $20,000 for a data-only device, per M2MSupport. When the device uses an already-approved module, PTCRB certification takes two to three weeks rather than months. 

The Blues Notecard carries modular certification for FCC, ISED, CE, and PTCRB, though status varies by SKU. That covers the intentional radiator portion of approval, which is the expensive part.

The real cost of building connectivity yourself

Building connectivity yourself can come with hidden costs, complexity, and delays at every stage.

Implementation requirements

Real-world impact

Average IoT time to market, kickoff to first paying customer

According to IoT Analytics, 2024

Average IoT time to market, kickoff to first paying customer

According to IoT Analytics, 2024

41 months, up 80% from 23 months in 2020

FCC certification, custom radio design

According to MarkReady, 2026

FCC certification, custom radio design

According to MarkReady, 2026

$8,000 to $30,000

FCC certification using a pre-certified module

According to MarkReady, 2026

FCC certification using a pre-certified module

According to MarkReady, 2026

$3,000 to $10,000 

Up to 1 in 2 devices can fail EMC testing on the first attempt, adding time and cost to development.

According to MarkReady, 2026

Up to 1 in 2 devices can fail EMC testing on the first attempt, adding time and cost to development.

According to MarkReady, 2026

Approximately 50% 

PTCRB certification, data-only device

According to M2MSupport

PTCRB certification, data-only device

According to M2MSupport

$16,000 to $20,000

Field provisioning, per technician day

According to Blues

Field provisioning, per technician day

According to Blues

$1,000 to $3,750

Duties and VAT on a $100 device entering a new market

According to Blues

Duties and VAT on a $100 device entering a new market

According to Blues

$30 to $40

What are manufacturers connecting?

Across the commercial vehicle, manufacturers are adding intelligence to:


  • Battery systems



  • Trailers


  • Tires



  • Brakes



  • Auxiliary power


  • Cargo doors


  • Refrigeration


  • More

How long does it take to bring a connected device to market?

IoT Analytics surveyed 100 OEM executives in 2024 and found the average connected product takes 41 months from project kickoff to first paying customer, an 80% increase from 23 months in 2020. The study attributes the increase to product complexity, tightening regulation (NIS2, the EU Data Act, the US Cyber Trust Mark), stricter security testing, and more ambitious use cases.

Connectivity is not the only reason programs stall, but it is a reason that can be removed with a purchasing decision rather than a hiring plan. 

What does connectivity cost after the device ships?

Provisioning cost lands hardest on companies deploying components into vehicles already in service. Configuring SIMs, network settings, and cloud credentials in the field costs $1,000 to $3,750 per technician day once labor, travel, and downtime are counted. A trailer OEM retrofitting 5,000 units feels this as a multi-year line item, not a launch expense. 
Cross-border deployment adds another layer. Duties, VAT, and excise charges commonly add $30 to $40 to a $100 device entering a new market. 

Security is a recurring cost, not a project. Cellular connectivity moves much of the network security burden onto the carrier, the way a phone carrier protects a smartphone. WiFi-based designs leave that burden with you, which means staffing for it. 

When should you build your own connectivity, and when should you buy?

    Build when:

    Connectivity is your differentiated product, not an enabler of it

    You have existing certified cellular designs and carrier relationships to reuse 

    Your volume and margin justify amortizing six figures of non-recurring engineering 

    You need radio behavior that no commercial module exposes 

    Buy when:

    Connectivity is a means to your product’s actual value – whether that’s improving battery health, monitoring tire pressure, protecting reefer loads, predicting brake wear, reducing downtime or enabling an entirely new connected service for fleets 

    You are selling into multiple regulatory regions 

    Your engineering team is your constraint and you would rather point it at your core application

    You need a predictable per-device cost you can quote to customers for ten years

    For most manufacturers building products for commercial vehicles, connectivity isn't the product. The battery manufacturer's value is battery intelligence. The reefer manufacturer's value is cold-chain integrity. The trailer manufacturer's value may be asset visibility, utilization or cargo protection. The component manufacturer's value may be predicting failure before it takes a truck off the road. Cellular protocol engineering isn't what differentiates any of them. 

    What buying connectivity looks like in trucking: 
Clarios IdleLess 

    Clarios, which produces more than 150 million batteries a year, used Blues to build IdleLess with Battery Manager, a connected battery-intelligence system that lets fleets monitor battery health, cut diesel idling, and reduce fuel consumption. Cagatay Topku, VP of Connected Services at Clarios, said Blues "helped us accelerate bringing connected battery monitoring to the market" so that "fleet operators can now see battery health data in real time."

    Clarios didn't set out to become a cellular connectivity company. It wanted to turn the truck battery into a source of actionable intelligence for fleets.  

  • Evexia Telehealth spent five years unable to ship a remote patient monitoring device into the Caribbean, blocked by unreliable coverage, unworkable data plans, and support costs that would have priced the product out of reach for its patients. After six months of field testing on Notecard, Evexia launched its bidirectional Gateway. Francois Koutchouk, CTO of Evexia Telehealth: "The Blues system encapsulates the sensor data portion of our hardware product all the way through to our cloud. By offloading the complexity of moving sensor data over cellular networks, we get to market faster and there is less that can go wrong." 

Built for products that have to work wherever the truck goes

Blues gives manufacturers a faster path from an unconnected component or subsystem to a product that can securely send data to the cloud. Instead of building and managing the connectivity stack yourself, your engineering team can focus on the data, insights and services that make your product more valuable to OEMs and fleets. 

What is Blues Notecard and Notehub? 

  • Microchip Board Streamline Icon: https://streamlinehq.com

    Notecard

    Notecard is a pre-certified cellular system-on-module, 30mm by 42mm, that adds cloud connectivity to any microcontroller-based device. It ships with an embedded SIM, GPS, accelerometer, secure element, and 500MB of cellular data with 10 years of service included in the unit price, with no subscription or contract. Notecard Cellular starts at $49 per unit. 

    Discover Notecard
  • Software Notebook Cog 1 Streamline Icon: https://streamlinehq.com

    Notehub

    Notehub is the data orchestration layer that routes device data to your cloud, manages fleets, and delivers over-the-air firmware updates. Notehub Essential includes the first 5,000 events per month at no charge, then $0.00075 per event. Enterprise pricing for fleets above 500 devices starts at $1,000 per month with volume discounts of 50% to 70%. 

    Discover Notehub

Frequently Asked Questions

It depends on volume and on whether connectivity is your differentiator. Certification, carrier integration, and cloud infrastructure are largely fixed costs, so they weigh most heavily on smaller deployments. Buying transfers those fixed costs to a vendor; building only recovers them at volumes high enough to amortize them.

For North America and Europe: FCC, ISED, CE/RED, and PTCRB for cellular carrier acceptance. A pre-certified module covers the intentional radiator, or transmitter, portion. Your finished product still needs unintentional radiator EMC testing, CE/RED conformity, and applicable safety approval. 

It depends on reporting frequency and payload size. Notecard includes 500MB over ten years and compresses and batches data at the edge to reduce transmission volume. Model your own reporting interval against that allowance before committing to a design.

Notecard maintains its Notehub connection through the update process, and supports remote recovery, so a failed update does not require a truck roll.

Ready to make your product part of the connected truck?

If connectivity is not the product you set out to build, it should not be the program that delays it.

Blues works with manufacturers building connected batteries, trailers, refrigeration systems and other commercial vehicle products. Tell us what you're trying to connect, what data you need from it, and where it needs to operate. We'll help you understand the fastest path from prototype to production.

Talk to Blues about your connected product

Sources

IoT Analytics, IoT Commercialization & Business Model Adoption Report 2024: link here

MarkReady, FCC Certification Cost 2026: link here

M2MSupport, PTCRB Process, Costs, Timeline and Labs: link here

Blues pricing: link here

Blues Notecard certifications: link here

Blues at MATS 2026 (Clarios):  link here