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Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

twilio.com

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Re: Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

#141

Post by bborud »

mleonhard wrote: post #82
bborud wrote: post #71

It is interesting to see how many telcos have failed at building IoT connectivity products that work. If you work for one of these, feel free to reach out. We will be open sourcing a server (written in Go with a Vue frontend) that can run on a regular private APN to provide developers with self service management and connectivity to their NB-IoT and LTE-M devices. If you want to have a look around you can take a peek…

A couple of suggestions for the landing page: 1) Explain what the product is, at the top of the page. 2) Remove the distracting animated background. 3) Switch out the graphic for "Shop" from a woman holding bags to a non-gendered icon. The page currently has three men working and one woman shopping. Some may think it portrays sexist attitudes.

Thanks for the feedback. I’m afraid we spent more time on the pages behind the login page and the backend code than the landing page. This is a useful reminder that we have to take more care when designing the new landing page.

Re: Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

#142

Post by Ductapemaster »

henryfjordan wrote: post #78
Ductapemaster wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

ATT offers an "unlimited" plan on their website right now with 100gb of "premium" (read unthrottled) data for $85/mo (goes down to $50 if you want 4 lines). Twillio is charging >10x the rate per-byte. ($1e-8 / byte compared to the $1e-9 that ATT charges). I don't know about you, but I use more than 1/10th of my data plan every month.

You're only thinking about the data fees. There's much more to an IoT offering that is priced into that cost. There's plenty of enterprise features, for example. Bulk management of SIMs is a huge one: setting data limits per-SIM or per-fleet, activating/deactivating them for seasonal devices or new distributions. Also consider SLAs for your very important data, or dedicated support from the carrier. You don't need any of these things when you are managing one phone, or even a family of phones, but they are essential for fleets of 100's or 1000's of devices.

Also, keep in mind that is data being sold to you for use only on their network. Roaming fees will be exorbitant if you need to go outside their network, which may be needed to reach rural areas, or when you have an asset tracker traveling between states or territories. Keep in mint that "normal priced data package" has very predictable usage — your phone is almost always online, meaning the backend infrastructure costs are low since it's not constantly going offline/online. The tower going out and verifying an IoT device should be on the network (especially if going through a roaming partner) is surprisingly expensive.

Re: Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

#144

Post by jsjohnst »

humancell wrote: post #139
jsjohnst wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to circle back here, seems the official date of AT&T shutting down their 2G (GSM/GPRS) happened in Jan 2017. Their 3G (HSDPA/UMTS) network is tentatively scheduled for about 1.5yrs from now. So my suggestion, if you’re building anything IoT like on AT&T, make sure you are using LTE-A, LTE-M, or NB-IoT for your radios or you’ll have a short operational life, if at all.

Yes ... I work for Twilio as an IoT SE - there are a lot of great and inexpensive modules that you can use. Stay away from anything 2G/3G as they are being shut down as bands are being reallocated. Also, avoid the "quad band" solutions that are advertised. I usually buy SIMCom modules from Ali Express. The SIM7000A or G, SIM7070G. The A is usually North American bands, and the G is global bands. There are E versions…

I’ve been using Sierra Wireless Cat-M1 modules for the projects I’ve been prototyping as they include an ARM Cortex A7 and GPS too in a single package. Bit expensive on the BOM, but convenience makes it worth it. Will test them with this once I get a chance.

Re: Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

#145

Post by GordonS »

webmaven wrote: post #140
AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I mean more is, once those devices are connected to "the network" is there a way to limit the usage of those SIMs so they could only connect to my systems, and not connect to "the internet" at large.

Seems like that's something you would design into the device itself (or rather, its software), whitelisting allowed domains or IPs.

I've done exactly this before when building an IoT device.

Re: Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

#146

Post by philnash »

alasdair_ wrote: post #88
dominotw wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what are some of cool products built with this tech.

My mailbox is in a block of other mailboxes that is fairly far from my home (say, 500m) and out of wifi range without an especially large antenna. I was thinking of making a small battery-powered widget to tell me when the mail arrived and adding it to my Home Assistant ( https://www.home-assistant.io/ ) installation. Another use may be something like a device that warns if a locked, remote, storage area is accessed.…

Here's an idea about how to start with the mailbox sensor: https://www.twilio.com/blog/iot-mailbox-sensor-m2m-to-sms-fu.... This one sends an SMS when triggered, but you could certainly add it into Home Assistant too.

Re: Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

#148

Post by kimi »

Ductapemaster wrote: post #51
kimi wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Yes and no. Whether the phone is roaming or not, the cost of data is the very same (marginally, zero). The industry a s a whole has a major issue if they think they can sell data for 10c/Mb. What I'm saying is that this is chocking a potentially huge industry, where only the applications that transmit ridiculously little data (by today's standards) can be made economically. My feeling is also that the overhead of switching and accounting for 100 bytes or one gigabyte is very very similar....

Re: Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta

#149

Post by bborud »

mleonhard wrote: post #82
bborud wrote: post #71

It is interesting to see how many telcos have failed at building IoT connectivity products that work. If you work for one of these, feel free to reach out. We will be open sourcing a server (written in Go with a Vue frontend) that can run on a regular private APN to provide developers with self service management and connectivity to their NB-IoT and LTE-M devices. If you want to have a look around you can take a peek…

A couple of suggestions for the landing page: 1) Explain what the product is, at the top of the page. 2) Remove the distracting animated background. 3) Switch out the graphic for "Shop" from a woman holding bags to a non-gendered icon. The page currently has three men working and one woman shopping. Some may think it portrays sexist attitudes.

btw, why do you say "woman"? What if that is a person with non-binary gender identity?
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