Live data from Hacker News

Polish charity gets huge phone bill thanks to stork

bbc.com

31–40 of 140 posts

Re: Polish charity gets huge phone bill thanks to stork

#33
post #8

Only tangentially related to the article, but where/how do researchers get global coverage SIM cards that you can just put on a stork and expect to get data/calling wherever it flies? I've looked for this before but only found what seemed like tourist scams with very high prices per MB/minute.

At least in the EU, AldiTalk offers 4G LTE with plans of up to 5.5 GB for 12.99€ / month[1]. I am not sure, though, what is the price per MB when a stork leaves the EU. [1] https://www.alditalk.de/internet-flat-xl

Yeah, basically you'll have to make the stork sign the form that makes him accept the international roaming charges when leaving EU territory.

Re: Polish charity gets huge phone bill thanks to stork

#34

Only tangentially related to the article, but where/how do researchers get global coverage SIM cards that you can just put on a stork and expect to get data/calling wherever it flies? I've looked for this before but only found what seemed like tourist scams with very high prices per MB/minute.

I use https://www.bnesim.com/ for a SIM card for my 4G hotspot. They charge €19 a GB in 64 countries, including China, Japan, and most of Europe.

Re: Polish charity gets huge phone bill thanks to stork

#35
post #17

Only tangentially related to the article, but where/how do researchers get global coverage SIM cards that you can just put on a stork and expect to get data/calling wherever it flies? I've looked for this before but only found what seemed like tourist scams with very high prices per MB/minute.

Ideally you'd get a dedicated M2M MVNO operator who'll sell you a whole stack of them. If you just want one, you'll have to do a lot of price comparison; Three UK have some nice deals where you can use inclusive minutes/data in some non-EU countries as well as the standard EU free roaming.

Does anybody know of one that doesn't charge a monthly fee? I have a product idea where I'd like to use mobile data as a backup in case of wifi network failure. So I'm willing to pay a higher per-MB fee if I can avoid a monthly per-SIM fee.

Re: Polish charity gets huge phone bill thanks to stork

#36
Meanwhile, can Microsoft please add an option to Windows10 that says 'this computer is only connected to an internal on-board network and satellite connection, please never try to update'? That was an expensive mistake as well.

I really wish people had started to migrate away from Windows earlier, but now all the essential stuff is written for it and well-tested, so any choice is hard.

Re: Polish charity gets huge phone bill thanks to stork

#37
post #36

Meanwhile, can Microsoft please add an option to Windows10 that says 'this computer is only connected to an internal on-board network and satellite connection, please never try to update'? That was an expensive mistake as well. I really wish people had started to migrate away from Windows earlier, but now all the essential stuff is written for it and well-tested, so any choice is hard.

I think there is something like that already. Look for "metered connections".

Re: Polish charity gets huge phone bill thanks to stork

#38
post #35
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideally you'd get a dedicated M2M MVNO operator who'll sell you a whole stack of them. If you just want one, you'll have to do a lot of price comparison; Three UK have some nice deals where you can use inclusive minutes/data in some non-EU countries as well as the standard EU free roaming.

Does anybody know of one that doesn't charge a monthly fee? I have a product idea where I'd like to use mobile data as a backup in case of wifi network failure. So I'm willing to pay a higher per-MB fee if I can avoid a monthly per-SIM fee.

With global roaming? Maybe something like knowroaming, $8 for a day's unlimited data in 100+ countries. Not much good if you want to use 100kbytes a day, but for your use case it might work

https://www.knowroaming.com/order/data-packages/160-global-u...

Re: Polish charity gets huge phone bill thanks to stork

#40
post #36

Meanwhile, can Microsoft please add an option to Windows10 that says 'this computer is only connected to an internal on-board network and satellite connection, please never try to update'? That was an expensive mistake as well. I really wish people had started to migrate away from Windows earlier, but now all the essential stuff is written for it and well-tested, so any choice is hard.

I think there is something like that already. Look for "metered connections".

There is, but Windows 10 will disable this functionality after a month so you have to keep logging in to reset it. We had problems using a remote PC with a 4G dongle - programs like Office kept downloading updates even when Windows update was disabled. Having turned on metering, we didn't even think about it until the bill came through.
Post reply on HN