Until relatively recently, cellular connectivity for business uplinks was typically overlooked or only used for backup connections of last resort or out of band connectivity. With the proliferation of 4G LTE and now the advent of 5G connectivity, the possibilities offered by a dedicated cellular uplink are growing to never-before-seen heights.
Many customers are now looking at a dedicated cellular uplink as a potential primary uplink for certain sites, such as locations where access to multiple ISPs for redundant circuits is impractical, or for temporary use while initially deploying a site while waiting for upstream ISP provisioning to complete before transitioning to a reliable backup connection that is mostly independent of traditional ISP infrastructure and service interruptions.
Determining whether to use a cellular uplink as a primary uplink will be heavily impacted by both the expected business needs for the uplink and the expected performance and cost of the cellular uplink as compared to a more traditional wired or satellite uplink. Each has potential trade-offs depending on the specific availability of connections in your area and the specific data costs associated with the cellular carriers available to choose from.
For example, many cellular plans have strict data caps, or limit throughput after crossing a certain data threshold for the month. While many carriers are also introducing business-grade plans, depending on your chosen provider and plans offered, this may strongly influence you to use the cellular uplink as a backup connection only to reduce unneeded data usage when a wired uplink is functional.
Alternatively, some locations may be limited in choice for wired uplinks but may have adequate 4G LTE coverage to allow for a cellular uplink to be used instead of a satellite uplink, providing potentially faster throughput and lower latency.