does anyone know good EU-based sims for IOT and similar low speed requirements?
Firsty.app – free 300kbit/s eSIM for US/EU
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Re: Firsty.app – free 300kbit/s eSIM for US/EU
#82Wow. 1.95 euros a day for the non-ad version? In India (where I live) I pay less than 3 euros a month for a 1.5GB everyday 5G connection and unlimited nationwide calls. So it's definitely not a "fair local rate" as they claim.
What would a one-day pre-paid card cost? That’s what you would need to compare.
Re: Firsty.app – free 300kbit/s eSIM for US/EU
#83> Firsty's connectivity services are currently available in Europe, the USA, Turkey and Switzerland.
Do they mean EU+Switzerland?
Re: Firsty.app – free 300kbit/s eSIM for US/EU
#84Does not seem to work in Ukraine
The FAQ says which countries are supported and that the global availability will come soon.
Re: Firsty.app – free 300kbit/s eSIM for US/EU
#85This seems pretty cool, so it's free slow cell service in exchange for watching a video ad every hour, with optional prepaid plans for higher speeds/no ads. It does seem that your cellular is only active for an hour after you last watch an ad, which is unfortunate if you want to receive notifications throughout the day.
Otherwise people would use it for IoT infrastructure. I certainly would.
Are there cheap LTE+ embedded modules that support eSIM? All the ESP32/Arduino boards with mobile data that I've used in the past required a physical SIM card.
Re: Firsty.app – free 300kbit/s eSIM for US/EU
#86Wow, this is actually very great. I hope many people will use this and app developers will be pressured to finally start thinking about bandwidth
Just like countries with low bandwidth it won’t have an impact on how web design is currently done.
Which makes sense as these are not markets easily monetized, just like users who use a free ad-supported mobile data provider.
Re: Firsty.app – free 300kbit/s eSIM for US/EU
#87This is so backwards. We now have cheap and fast cryptocurrency (I build Tonkeeper, a wallet for TON) and eSIMs that cover big chunks of world at a time. The cost is low, it's one-click purchase and you have a reliable connection without spam. Basic human right is not to sell your soul for pennies, but to be able to buy things you need, cheap and easy without lame border controls and obnoxious banking fees.
> Basic human right is not to sell your soul for pennies
100% this.
And pennies is what these ads pay the company when you watch them anyways. Honestly, I would rather have a data plan that I could top up by paying them these ad pennies directly than watch YET ANOTHER ad - I get enough of those everywhere else.
Re: Firsty.app – free 300kbit/s eSIM for US/EU
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't that always inherently true? With travel SIMs, what you're buying is convenience. Not to mention, some countries have annoying KYC processes for getting SIM cards/service. Presumably this bypasses that.
If I'm buying a SIM, there's a physical cost to manufacture the thing. There's no such cost with eSIMs. Also, to sell me a physical SIM, the telecom has to employ somebody to stand there and sell me a SIM. With an eSIM there's a website and it doesn't matter if 1 or 1000 people are buying SIMs at the same time. I would think that eventually the ability to scale would push the costs of eSIM down to be cheaper/the same…
> to sell me a physical SIM, the telecom has to employ somebody to stand there and sell me a SIM
In France there is a telco called Free, that has vending machines for SIM cards all across the country inside of various kiosks.
It’s pretty great.
I was there recently for a couple of months, and I went to one of these vending machines. Filled out some basic info about myself and paid with my debit card. The machine gave me a SIM card that I then put in my phone and have been using since.
The amount of gigabytes was decent too.
I am in a different country now, but still in the EU. Here I can still use the same SIM, but the amount of traffic that that plan gives me outside is pretty low compared to what it gave me in France. For now it’s been ok though, because here I have fiber at home. When I was in France the AirBnB we stayed at didn’t have any internet so that’s why I bought the French SIM with sufficient amount of gigas to get my work done.
Anyway, this vending machine in kiosks system is awesome. More telcos should do that in other countries too.
Re: Firsty.app – free 300kbit/s eSIM for US/EU
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does it know that you watched the ad? Does it quiz you or what? It actually sounds terrible. I can get a minimal prepaid sim for $30/year (200MB/mo + basic voice and text) and that sounds preferable to this thing with ads. https://www.ebay.com/itm/133196831828
The eSIM offered works in multiple countries. The eBay listing is limited to the US. This is a similar thing that is comparable to your eBay link, but also doesn't feature roaming. 100MB a month for 5 years, for £16 one off: https://www.rwgmobile.wales/webshop/buy-forget/5-year-sim-da...
The cohort Venn diagram is world travelers who can’t afford a global service? People who can pay for a flight but would rather watch an ad than pay for service? And the value of that ad inventory of people unwilling to pay is?
I’m all for the effort, and I am fond of business models that more directly convey the revenue from ads to customers, but I have some concerns for this business. It all could fade pretty quickly.
Re: Firsty.app – free 300kbit/s eSIM for US/EU
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Airalo made getting a SIM in India so much easier. The KYC checks they introduced are poorly understood by local vendors making it really painful to get a local SIM. Also, being able to pre-purchase the SIM card means you can immediately browse when arriving. When we arrived, the WiFi in Chennai airport couldn't deliver the OTP to our foreign phone numbers, so without the pre-purchased eSIMs we wouldn't have been abl…
> I don't like it that they charge such a premium, it makes having data as a tourist somewhat of a privilege. I obviously don't like that the premium for an eSIM in a place like India is so high, but I think (having a brief look at esimdb.com) $20-30 USD for 10-15 GB is not unreasonable for the substantial portion of tourists to India who are already traveling from another continent [1], and considering it's in the r…
> To be clear, I don't mean that the premium is warranted, but just that it may not be much of a privilege for many tourists.
Then we agree on that :)
For sure, it's not a big dent in ones budget for most travelers coming from other continents. The eSIM rates are indeed not that different from local rates. Looking at it transactionally, the premium is easily worth the convenience it yields.
Most of what I dislike about it is that being nearly forced to take the eSIM makes me feel more like an outsider.
Previous time I visited I did manage to get my local SIM, even though it took a couple of hours to find a store which was capable - and willingness - to issue one. This time, the regulation change caused my SIM card to get stuck in bureaucratic limbo because of new and poorly implemented additional KYC checks.
I appreciated the chore of getting a local SIM card, because it exposes you to integrate somewhat. It leads to interesting encounters outside of the normal tourist bubble, not just the people but also a bit in how their day-to-day business works. As such, I would like to be able to recommend others to try to get the SIM for themselves too.
Besides this 'stay in your privileged tourist bubble'-feeling, it also feels wrong that the premium between local data rates and the eSIM rates are that high. Even though the value-add seems minimal for anything other than skipping KYC completely and being able to pay with international credit card.
That difference goes somewhere and - I worry - that by fuelling that niche it only incentivizes the eSIM providers to lobby for borderline impossible KYC checks on local SIMs, which they can bypass for anyone able to afford that premium.