How a critical environmental monitoring gateway on the Great Orme in Llandudno overcame network congestion during peak tourist periods by switching to KeySIM's unsteered multi-network IoT SIM.
Conwy County Borough Council serves the communities of North Wales, covering a diverse area that includes coastal towns, rural landscapes, and sites of significant natural and cultural importance. The Council's Innovation and Transformation department is responsible for deploying and managing digital infrastructure across the authority's area — including IoT sensor networks used for environmental monitoring.
One such deployment covers the eastern side of the Great Orme — a limestone headland overlooking Llandudno and a major tourist destination attracting large numbers of visitors throughout the year. IoT sensors deployed across this area feed environmental data back to the Council via a solar-powered RAKwireless gateway installed on a school site in Llandudno.
Maintaining reliable data transmission from this gateway is essential to the Council's environmental monitoring capability — and it was here that connectivity proved to be a recurring challenge.
The RAKwireless gateway itself performed reliably from a hardware perspective. The problem was connectivity — specifically, the behaviour of the single-network SIM that had previously been in use.
The Great Orme and the surrounding Llandudno area attract exceptionally high visitor numbers, particularly during peak holiday periods and bank holiday weekends. During these periods, mobile networks in the area can become heavily congested as thousands of visitors simultaneously use their devices — causing service degradation for any device relying on a single network at that location.
The result was intermittent loss of connectivity at precisely the times when the area was busiest, reducing the reliability of environmental data transmission and undermining the Council's ability to monitor conditions consistently across the Great Orme.
Following the implementation of KeySIM's unsteered multi-network IoT SIM technology, the gateway is now able to access multiple UK mobile networks and move dynamically between available networks when local conditions change.
When one network becomes congested during peak visitor periods, the gateway can connect via an alternative — maintaining data transmission and ensuring continuity of environmental monitoring regardless of visitor numbers at any given time.
This directly addressed the root cause of the connectivity problem: not poor signal, but network saturation on a single operator. With access to Vodafone, O2, EE, and Three on one SIM, the gateway has the flexibility to route around congestion automatically, without any manual intervention from the Council's team.
Vodafone, O2, EE and Three on one SIM — bypasses congestion on any single operator.
Automatically moves to the best available network — no manual intervention required.
Works within the existing RAKwireless solar gateway — no hardware changes needed.
Consistent data transmission from the Great Orme even during peak tourist periods.
"This gateway, located on a school site in Llandudno, plays a critical role in receiving data from IoT sensors deployed across the eastern side of the Great Orme. Ensuring consistent connectivity is essential to maintaining reliable environmental monitoring capability."
"The solar RAKwireless gateway has performed reliably from a hardware perspective. However, the previous single-network SIM solution was susceptible to service degradation during periods of high network demand. This is particularly evident during peak tourist seasons and bank holidays, when mobile network congestion in Llandudno can lead to intermittent loss of connectivity."
"The Council has implemented a multi-network IoT connectivity solution, enabling the gateway to dynamically utilise alternative mobile networks when local congestion occurs. This has significantly improved resilience and ensures continuity of data transmission, supporting the ongoing reliability of the Council's IoT infrastructure."
"Real-world deployments are where connectivity is truly tested. In many cases signal strength alone is not the issue — local congestion can become the problem. Access to multiple networks gives critical infrastructure additional resilience where a single network may struggle during busy periods."
The Conwy Council deployment highlights a challenge increasingly encountered as IoT infrastructure expands into public-facing and tourist locations. Signal strength is often sufficient — but single-network SIMs offer no protection against congestion, which can be unpredictable and location-specific.
As IoT deployments continue expanding into critical applications — from environmental monitoring and public infrastructure to security and smart city systems — resilient connectivity is becoming increasingly important to ensure services remain available when they are needed most.
KeySIM's multi-network approach provides local authorities and public sector organisations with the same level of connectivity resilience available to large enterprises — on flexible PAYG terms that suit public sector procurement requirements.
From environmental monitoring to smart city infrastructure, KeySIM's multi-network IoT SIM keeps critical public sector devices connected — even when individual networks are congested.