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Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

twilio.com

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Re: Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

#3

Post by JoshTriplett »

lowmemcpu wrote: post #2

Is this intended for consumers or corporations? Could someone clarify the use-cases? It looks like it's $100+ for 1GB of data

IoT devices don't use SIM cards for gigabytes of data; they use them for bytes and kilobytes of data. That's why this is billed by the byte.

Re: Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

#4

Post by brandon »

lowmemcpu wrote: post #2

Is this intended for consumers or corporations? Could someone clarify the use-cases? It looks like it's $100+ for 1GB of data

This is likely aimed at $device_manufacturer that wants to put a cellular modem into their device for remote telemetry (uploading a tiny payload every 24 hours for the lifetime on the device). There's a lot of attention in the docs towards "fleets" — they aren't expecting you to just buy one.

Re: Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

#5

Post by wrkronmiller »

lowmemcpu wrote: post #2

Is this intended for consumers or corporations? Could someone clarify the use-cases? It looks like it's $100+ for 1GB of data

I imagine it's best-suited for corporations making devices that can be deployed to arbitrary countries. It looks like you're paying an enormous premium on data for the ability for this sim to "just work" internationally.

Another use case might be for tinkerers creating very low-bandwidth applications (e.g. a few megabytes/texts per month).

For anyone else I imagine it makes more sense just to buy a prepaid SIM and swap it out as-needed.

Re: Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

#6

Post by cordite »

Viewing this site took 4.5MB with trackers.

That's half a dollar of data. Now I understand that IOT stuff would likely have smaller payloads. But that really looks like a great way to rack up costs with a run away program submitting or retrieving data in a bad loop.

Re: Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

#7

Post by [deleted] »

wrkronmiller wrote: post #5
lowmemcpu wrote: post #2

Is this intended for consumers or corporations? Could someone clarify the use-cases? It looks like it's $100+ for 1GB of data

I imagine it's best-suited for corporations making devices that can be deployed to arbitrary countries. It looks like you're paying an enormous premium on data for the ability for this sim to "just work" internationally. Another use case might be for tinkerers creating very low-bandwidth applications (e.g. a few megabytes/texts per month). For anyone else I imagine it makes more sense just to buy a prepaid SIM and sw…

[deleted]

Re: Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

#8

Post by Nextgrid »

Curious as to how does this compare to "Programmable Wireless" and whether it supports calls and SMS? It's not clear whether it's an evolution of Programmable Wireless or something totally separate. I tend towards the latter because the documentation is separate between both offerings.

Last time I tried Programmable Wireless it was very lacking. Calls were not supported on roaming at all (so I couldn't test it as I'm outside the US) and SMS was very flaky; some texts outright bypassed the SMS to API routing and were handled by the upstream carrier directly.

There was also a "bug" where you couldn't send SMS to the SIM using an arbitrary originator number. I say bug in quotes because I'm sure there is some obscure reason for it (or is it to cover a limitation?) because the error code returned was custom and seemed explicitly made for this reason (and was not mentioned on any docs).

I understand it was in early beta when I tried it but none of these issues were resolved even years later.

Re: Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

#9

Post by bredren »

I worked on IoT projects for two major wireless carriers both trying to sell hardware integrated with data management. I think the idea was to sort of create value-added services on top of the dumb pipe.

Both companies invested heavily in the projects and both failed badly.

One of the major issues was just getting a dev setup using all the proprietary stuff involved. Onboarding developers was just one issue.

Both systems tied together a bunch of partners, and the folks running both shows had no technical background. Nor their managers.

Order the SIM from the console makes things pretty easy.

Twilio has consistently delivered easy ways to access cell stuff. This is def a step in the right direction. It would be awesome to tinker with this product for sensor data.

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