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Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

twilio.com

21–30 of 149 posts

Re: Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

#21
post #11

Think cargo ship containers and other similar internationally transient use cases. Sounds like an exciting product/service. Looking forward to seeing how this is used.

Trucks, containers, ships, cars...

But also anything that is centrally manufactured or managed but distributed globally. Imagine being able to buy and manage SIMs from one place regardless of whether your [connected thing] will be deployed in United States or in Timor-Leste.

Re: Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

#22
post #17

Could a potential use case be soldering these onto consumer electronics and phoning home telemetry even if the user doesn’t connect to WiFi?

Potentially yes. This is just a SIM card, so one would additionally need to have a modem, consistent power source and space for all of these extra items. The value of the telemetry would need to be worth several dollars / month over several years to justify this.

Re: Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

#23
post #12

Looks like a killer of all other IoT connectivity solutions (eg, Verizon, AT&T, Particle). Those IoT platforms better find a way to support third-party SIMs, if they don't already. Source: Consulted AT&T on bringing their IoT Connectivity solution to market. Their huge cell network was the main selling point; the platform and services were add-ons. Edit: Another commenter mentioned Hologram, which already has a globa…

I know the Verizon one does. It just is not on their pages. The platform they bought from Qualcomm to do it was in that same space as Twilio. Been a few years though they may have ripped it out by this point. 10 cents per MB and 5 cents per SMS. Ouch!

Re: Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

#24
post #12

Looks like a killer of all other IoT connectivity solutions (eg, Verizon, AT&T, Particle). Those IoT platforms better find a way to support third-party SIMs, if they don't already. Source: Consulted AT&T on bringing their IoT Connectivity solution to market. Their huge cell network was the main selling point; the platform and services were add-ons. Edit: Another commenter mentioned Hologram, which already has a globa…

Particle has a number of devices that already support third party SIMs (their Electron and Boron lines in particular).

Particle also has partnered with Twilio in the past. I know there was some legacy integration with Twilio SIMs.

Particle's value prop is an IoT platform where cellular connectivity is a component. If anything, this seems like it would be complimentary and not a killer to their value prop.

Re: Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

#25
post #6

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.

Some companies implement IoT by using protocols other than HTTP. For instance, CoAP is one I'm familiar with which can significantly reduce bandwidth consumption.

Re: Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

#26
post #12

Looks like a killer of all other IoT connectivity solutions (eg, Verizon, AT&T, Particle). Those IoT platforms better find a way to support third-party SIMs, if they don't already. Source: Consulted AT&T on bringing their IoT Connectivity solution to market. Their huge cell network was the main selling point; the platform and services were add-ons. Edit: Another commenter mentioned Hologram, which already has a globa…

Particle has a number of devices that already support third party SIMs (their Electron and Boron lines in particular). Particle also has partnered with Twilio in the past. I know there was some legacy integration with Twilio SIMs. Particle's value prop is an IoT platform where cellular connectivity is a component. If anything, this seems like it would be complimentary and not a killer to their value prop.

Valid point. I mean this kills their connectivity offering, which in my AT&T example was the core thing. Sounds like Particle now treats connectivity as a commodity and focuses on the platform. Good decision.

Re: Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

#27

If you're interested in this space, Hologram does the same thing (and appears to have had a head start compared to Twilio): https://hologram.io

Was going to post the same thing. I wonder how the two compare.

Pricing-wise, seems like Twilio has higher fixed but lower usage costs:

https://www.twilio.com/docs/iot/supersim

| Starting at $2 per active Super SIM per month.

| Data Usage - Starting at $0.10 / MB.

https://hologram.io/pricing/

| $1 per device per month + $0.38 / MB.

Of course these prices depend on device volume. Twilio may be able to offer lower costs because of their scale, but perhaps Hologram can provide a better user experience because this is the only thing they do.

Re: Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

#30
post #6

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.

Hi there, Matt Jackson from Twilio here. I’m the Product Manager for Super SIM. With Super SIM you can configure a data limit for your SIMs as a guardrail against potential runaway applications. You can set this to a value as low as 1MB. If you know that your use case doesn’t require a lot of data, such as occasionally sending a little bit of JSON with some sensor readings, you can set this to a low number to keep your costs down in case something does go awry.
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