D&H and Cellhub Give MSPs a Turnkey Path into 5G — and Recurring Revenue

Are you an MSPs looking to expand into the fast-evolving world of 5G services? Well, you now have a new entry point. D&H Distributing and Cellhub have teamed up to offer next-gen 5G enablement for channel partners. This combines connectivity, hardware, and managed services support into one streamlined path.

The collaboration, announced earlier this week, was designed to help MSPs unlock new recurring revenue streams. This is done by bundling mobile connectivity with laptops, tablets, routers, and more. D&H and Cellhub handle the heavy lifting on the telco side so MSPs don’t have to.

A Shortcut into 5G and Telco — Without the Overhead

For many MSPs, the idea of getting into 5G and telco has seemed too cumbersome. It often features steep learning curves, costly investments, and unfamiliar territory.

Adam Crockett

“Getting into cellular and telco has felt like a bridge too far,” Adam Crockett, senior director of professional and managed services for D&H Distributing, said in an interview with ChannelPro. “This is a gateway. This is a way for MSPs to leverage distribution to help them get into a space that would take investment in subject matter experts and building out infrastructure — and just really understanding that telco world.”

Through the partnership, D&H and Cellhub manage activation, carrier relationships, billing support, and customer service. This way, MSPs can focus on packaging and delivering complete solutions. The offering includes pre-activated devices with 5G service baked in. Partners can add cellular plans — and their own services — on top of the hardware sale.

“The MSPs make money on the hardware sale, adding the cellular plan to it, and then the recurring revenue from the cell plan and any of their own attached services,” Crockett explained. “There is a rich commission model, and you become very sticky with your customers.”

Going Wide with Customers

Beyond mobility, the enablement strategy opens the door to selling networking products and services that may have previously been outside an MSP’s scope.

“You can go wide with them around voice,” noted Crockett. “And you can sell them other networking products that weren’t even on your line card. The partners come to us and they’re looking to D&H to be a trusted advisor, and help them get into these adjacent areas without the massive investment upfront.”

D&H is positioning itself not just as a distributor, but as an extension of the MSP’s team.

“We will be that subject matter expert,” Crockett said. “That pre-sales support group, that post-sales support group. We’ll be the folks that can be on phone calls with th

eir end users and help them understand their telco or 5G options. The other option is to do that yourself. That takes time. That takes energy. It takes investment.”

AI and 5G in Every Laptop?

The growing convergence of AI and 5G is making it harder for partners to ignore the opportunity. This is especially true as device manufacturers begin building both into next-gen hardware — and as businesses prepare for a major operating system shift.

Support for Windows 10 is scheduled to end in October 2025, which is expected to drive a significant wave of device upgrades across the SMB space. Many older machines won’t meet the hardware requirements for Windows 11, making new laptops a necessity, not just a nice-to-have.

“Laptops are going to be a lot different tomorrow than they were yesterday in regards to the chipset and the technology,” Crockett emphasized. “The two most significant enhancements are an AI chipset, and it has a 5G modem or SIM card in it.”

That means MSPs can expect customers to start asking for always-connected endpoints and the services that come with them. Thanks to Cellhub and D&H, getting there might be less of a leap than many thought.

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