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Twilio Super SIM

twilio.com

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Re: Twilio Super SIM

#171

Post by hodgesrm »

andrewkirk wrote: post #96
untog wrote: post #9

This is very cool tech, but it seems like a niche use-case. It's not made for consumers, and the vast majority of IoT devices barely move, let alone between countries. But , if I were working for a haulage company and was interested in tracking, say, truck location, speed etc across the whole of Europe I could see this being a great way to do it.

PM for the Super SIM here. The problem we're trying to solve here isn't so much that the devices moves between countries, that's somewhat solved, especially in the EU. We want to help companies that deploy devices globally simplify their logistics and supply chain by being able to use a single SIM regardless of the destination of the device.

This. My wife's company builds devices for ag tech. This technology is enabling to reach a global market.

Re: Twilio Super SIM

#172

Post by nick238 »

walterbell wrote: post #49
32032141 wrote: post #2

I've been wondering for a while what the purpose of all the NB band LTE stuff is even for. The going rate is often around 40c/MB in most countries (lower on Twilio by the looks of it, but the same order of magnitude), which seems like there's some very specific high value-per-byte application intended. Some of the technologies people are touting for very long battery life have transmission latencies of 10+ seconds as…

There are also LEO satellite networks on the way. Is it feasible to use physical RF shielding for devices?

If you have physical access to the device, it's probably cheaper/easier to modify it, replacing the antenna with a load to ground. And if you're going to do that, you could probably negotiate with the provider to sell you a cheaper one with no LTE radios.

I'm probably thinking of larger B2B though, individuals/SB probably won't have the expertise/influence

Re: Twilio Super SIM

#173

Post by pedalpete »

andrewkirk wrote: post #96
untog wrote: post #9

This is very cool tech, but it seems like a niche use-case. It's not made for consumers, and the vast majority of IoT devices barely move, let alone between countries. But , if I were working for a haulage company and was interested in tracking, say, truck location, speed etc across the whole of Europe I could see this being a great way to do it.

PM for the Super SIM here. The problem we're trying to solve here isn't so much that the devices moves between countries, that's somewhat solved, especially in the EU. We want to help companies that deploy devices globally simplify their logistics and supply chain by being able to use a single SIM regardless of the destination of the device.

I didn't get that from the product page. Perhaps it should say "Simplify your logistics supply chain with a single SIM solution regardless of the final destination for your device".

Totally missed what market you were going after.

Re: Twilio Super SIM

#174

Post by Aeolun »

birdman3131 wrote: post #157
subsubsub wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will there ever be a consumer offering along these lines? (i.e. i am travelling around and don't want to have to get travel SIMs in every different country I visit).

Amazon kindle used to do this back in the day. Then people started tethering them and then all the kindle 3's and before got limited to 50 mb/month. (Later ones just had no internet outside amazon/wikipedia iirc)

Unlimited 3G everywhere was why I bought mine. Never tethered it either, but it was limited just the same :/

Re: Twilio Super SIM

#175

Post by Aeolun »

lol768 wrote: post #32
sequence7 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But, if I were working for a haulage company and was interested in tracking, say, truck location, speed etc across the whole of Europe I could see this being a great way to do it. If you wanted to do that in the EU you just need a sim card with data from any EU country. EU rules on roaming mean that your sim will work across the EU just as it does from its home country. I agree this would be a great use case if you…

Note that the EU rules apply differently to data than they do to voice and SMS usage. A provider offering unlimited data in the UK can cap your data usage in Belgium or charge e.g. £8 / GB after you use 20GB of data.

That does not sound unreasonable.

Re: Twilio Super SIM

#176

Post by walterbell »

nick238 wrote: post #172
walterbell wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are also LEO satellite networks on the way. Is it feasible to use physical RF shielding for devices?

If you have physical access to the device, it's probably cheaper/easier to modify it, replacing the antenna with a load to ground. And if you're going to do that, you could probably negotiate with the provider to sell you a cheaper one with no LTE radios. I'm probably thinking of larger B2B though, individuals/SB probably won't have the expertise/influence

> replacing the antenna with a load to ground.

Would that be sufficient for an iPhone?

Re: Twilio Super SIM

#177

Post by davidnetten »

This product is intended for use in IoT devices and not really for 'iPhone use'. A few things to consider:

First of, in the telecom market, there are two ways to get a discount: Buy more SIM cards, or buy more data. Let's say you offer a track-and-trace product, have deployed 1000 GPS trackers, you can easily get the monthly fees and the usage fees down to cents. Same goes for your 'GB-per-month' personal phone subscription, you buy more data, you get it cheaper.

But since roaming will always be costly, even for wholesale carries, SIM card subscriptions that can be used globally are almost always A. expensive, or B intended for IoT (low usage). (GPS, trackers, sensors, feedback buttons, etc). Twilio is focussing on the latter with this SIM.

That brings us to NB-IoT and LTE cat M.

LTE cat M(machine) is basically a stripped down LTE modem, while an NB-IoT modem (or LTE cat Narrowband) is a stripped down LTE cat M modem. Network parameters for these types of connectivity have been tweaked in favour of power consumption at the costs of low bandwidth and high latency. You could say that LTE-M is used for 'MB's per month'-devices (smartwatch for example) and NB-IoT is used for 'bytes per month' devices (is my container full already).

NB-IoT is cheap, extremely power efficient, but is not intended for moving devices.

LTE-M can be used for more demanding applications, like smartwatches, panic buttons (including voice) etc. It can also be used in roaming applications, but that's it. No streaming video etc.

So if you are looking to deploy a large scale IoT application, you want cheap, simple and energy-efficient hardware, which is why you need NB-IoT or LTE-M.

You could go for other technologies like Sigfox or LoRaWan, but they are inferior to NB and LTE-M if you ask me (roaming, availability of network/hardware).

In my view, Twilio does a great job of offering all kinds of telecom services (one stop shop), a common strategy in telecom called 'bundling'. But if you know what you want and where to look, you can get much better rates... Margins are great on this, I can assure you that :)

Re: Twilio Super SIM

#178

Post by wittedhaddock »

mcrae wrote: post #156
wittedhaddock wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you want multiple numbers? Doesn't something like Whatsapp or FaceTime help prevent you from needing them?

Mostly for business. Maybe some people are comfortable to Whatsapp you, but it's inappropriate for a lot of situations. Also, in a lot of places you need a local number to get things done. Like when making reservations at restaurants or you leave your number in the POS to have them text when a table is ready, etc. As it is, I have a dual SIM Android phone as well as an iPhone and have 3 postpaid plans in different pl…

Got it, so it's the recipient who matters. If whatsapp let you send it out as a plain old SMS from a number you can select, and receive their SMS as a whatsapp message, would it solve your problem?

Re: Twilio Super SIM

#179

Post by andrewkirk »

subsubsub wrote: post #143
andrewkirk wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PM for the Super SIM here. The problem we're trying to solve here isn't so much that the devices moves between countries, that's somewhat solved, especially in the EU. We want to help companies that deploy devices globally simplify their logistics and supply chain by being able to use a single SIM regardless of the destination of the device.

Will there ever be a consumer offering along these lines? (i.e. i am travelling around and don't want to have to get travel SIMs in every different country I visit).

We won't build specifically for consumers, we're targeting customers with 1000+ devices. My plan is to move my T-Mobile consumer subscription to my eSIM on my iPhone X once T-Mobile supports it and then put a Super SIM in my second slot for global data.
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