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Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

twilio.com

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Re: Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

#51

Post by Ductapemaster »

kimi wrote: post #43
akulkarni wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cost…

I'm frankly appalled at $0.10/MB. Are we still in the 90's?

I work for an IoT company, and I can tell you that data costs are high for IoT because the cost model is different. You purchase a 10GB plan from AT&T for your cell phone and they know that you likely won't use it all, so they can "oversell" data. With IoT, you have a much better handle on how much data you use so when you purchase a 10MB plan, they know you will use almost all of it. Additionally, IoT devices tend to have higher backend infrastructure costs as they often connect/disconnect from the towers as they wake up and go to sleep, or move around between towers /carriers a lot. Plus the "always roaming" statement above adds cost in exchange for flexibility.

It's just a different business altogether.

Re: Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

#53

Post by Ductapemaster »

Gamemaster1379 wrote: post #24
gk1 wrote: 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.

Thanks for the mention! I'm an employee at Particle, and this is exactly it. I'll be honest and say that dealing with carriers sucks. If you want to bring your IoT device to market, you want to focus on building that device — not negotiating with AT&T or Verizon. We protect our users from that so you can focus on your core competencies and shipping your products.

We leverage our large deployed base of devices for negotiations in a way that you cannot if you are a single IoT business. We've actually had customers use Particle, decide they wanted to do their own thing for cost/complexity reasons, start a relationship with the carriers, and come running back because it was intractable for them.

Re: Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

#54

Post by ProZsolt »

akulkarni wrote: post #27
Nextgrid wrote: post #10

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 cost…

For hologram.io it's $1.50/SIM + $0.40/MB under 100 devices, but only $0.65/SIM + $0.33/MB over 5000

Re: Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

#55

Post by ProZsolt »

rcoder wrote: post #42
cordite wrote: 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.

If you imagine "IoT" as "a bunch of Linux boxes pushing around multi-MB JSON payloads over fast network pipes" then yeah, this would be a bad deal. For datagram-based protocols like CoAP which are explicitly designed to let you control bandwidth usage down to the packet level this should be fine. 1kB of data (which is honestly large for a normal telemetry or sensor payload) is really cheap, even at $0.10 per MB. Many…

CoAP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constrained_Application_Protoc...

Re: Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

#56

Post by tracerbulletx »

matjaxon wrote: post #30
cordite wrote: 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 yo…

I really appreciate Twilio's features that limit unexpected costs. I have a personal Twilio account I use to tinker, and to run a simple phone system for my small business, and I would be super worried about doing that if it was like AWS where the best I could get was alerts. Instead Twilio let's me charge my account upfront and disables it if I hit that cap. It's great peace of mind for smaller users.

Re: Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

#57

Post by toast0 »

Jarwain wrote: post #49
polishdude20 wrote: post #39

What's the difference between an SMS command and just sending data? It says they charge 10 cents for a Mb but 5 cents for a data command. Can I just send a command that is less than a Mb and save money?

It appears they charge by the byte, so it'd only be efficient to use SMS if the payload is greater than 512KB

SMS payload is 140 bytes. (160 characters with 7-bit characters)

Re: Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

#58

Post by pheeney »

Could this be used as a sort of sporadic consumer phone service? For example signing up for services that require phone validation but want to protect your real phone for privacy. Activate the SIM, signup, verify, then deactivate. Repeat if they don't recognize your device or when you need to re-verify. After hardware costs you would be looking at $2/mo any time you needed it.

Most other services I have looked at require a constant subscription. Or they are not a "real" number like google voice that can be detected and rejected. Or when you cancel and re-activate your previous phone number has changed so you can't re-verify without maintaining an active subscription. If the number is assigned to the sim then you can potentially rotate or have multiple numbers as well.

Re: Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

#59

Post by avree »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #28
rsync wrote: post #14

No verizon support, unfortunately ... https://www.twilio.com/docs/iot/supersim/available-networks#...

Are there any geo areas where ATT+TMO/Sprint (combined due to merger) isn't at parity with VZ?

Yes, many. Verizon is still the only option for reception in many areas—I live in Los Altos Hills, and the only provider with reception for much of the town is Verizon.

Re: Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

#60

Post by gruez »

pheeney wrote: post #58

Could this be used as a sort of sporadic consumer phone service? For example signing up for services that require phone validation but want to protect your real phone for privacy. Activate the SIM, signup, verify, then deactivate. Repeat if they don't recognize your device or when you need to re-verify. After hardware costs you would be looking at $2/mo any time you needed it. Most other services I have looked at req…

I suspect the phone numbers will still show up as a voip number, which is probably be an issue for sms validation.
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