Leading Agriculture Drone Company Relies on Zipit for Reliable BVLOS Connectivity

The Challenge

As the drone company scaled from early pilots to a production fleet of thousands of Verizon-connected devices, their connectivity requirements became both mission‑critical and operationally complex:

Static IPs as a hard requirement

• • Each drone and controller needs a static IP address to support remote management, telemetry, and customer documentation.
  • The operational process depended on activating SIMs, capturing the static IPs, and embedding them into customer documentation before devices ship.

Static IP scarcity and workflow friction

• As with many other carriers, Verizon’s limited static IP pools are in limited, controlled supply, which would result in activation failures and blocked shipments.
• When static IPs were available, it was common to have gaps in time before those IPs appeared, forcing the drone company to:
  • Open tickets
  • Use manual look-ups directly in the Verizon portal, and
  • Wait for confirmations to proceed.

This process could lead to operational risk at scale and could also mean disruptions - that drone and controller shipments would have to be delayed, or would arrive misconfigured.

Governance and cost controls

• The drone company needed usage monitoring rules to automatically disable SIMs at specific data thresholds (e.g., 1GB and 10GB) to manage cost and avoid run‑away usage.

The Solution

Through Zipit, the drone company obtained carrier‑grade Verizon connectivity along with Zipit’s connectivity management platform and support hands-on from Zipit's knowledgable team, creating a strong foundation for operational reliability.

1. Structured onboarding and rapid path to production

After a smooth, rapid commercial and technical review period, Zipit's team was able to onboard the drone customer, delivering the Verizon connectivity services needed and aligning the setup to the customer's solution architecture and operational requirements.

2. Deep technical alignment on device and network behavior

• Zipit works alongside the drone company to:
  • Register specific IMEIs for drones and controllers with Verizon to avoid activation issues.
  • Confirm device types (tablet with built‑in modem vs external modem) to align with Verizon’s policies and avoid blocked activations.
    
    

3. Operational support for static IPs and activations

Zipit helps the drone customer navigate static IP constraints: from providing guidance through the support ticket process to coordinating new static IP pool requests, ensuring the drone company has the right operational support to grow their business. 

4. Governance & usage controls

Zipit's platform enables usage monitoring rules to be configured for the drone company's SIMs, allowing the customer to:

• Monitor data usage per SIM,
• Trigger alerts at key thresholds (e.g., 1GB, 10GB), and
• Automatically disable SIMs when usage exceeds policy

The Results

With Zipit’s platform and ongoing hands-on support, the drone manufacturer gains the visibility and control needed to manage a growing fleet of connected drones and controller units with greater confidence.

Zipit has helped reduce operational friction around one of the customer’s most critical requirements: static IP management. Instead of treating SIM activations, static IP allocation, and exception handling as disconnected manual tasks, the company now has a more structured operational model for provisioning connectivity, supporting shipments, and keeping field devices deployment-ready.

Through its partnership with Zipit, the drone customer also strengthened its governance over cellular usage. By using Zipit’s platform to monitor SIM-level consumption, trigger alerts at key thresholds, and automatically disable SIMs that exceed policy limits, the company improved its ability to control costs and reduce the risk of unmanaged data usage across a growing device fleet.