Polish charity gets huge phone bill thanks to stork • Hacker News Board

Re: Polish charity gets huge phone bill thanks to stork

#131

Post by wpietri » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 2:07 AM UTC

isostatic wrote: post #38

wpietri wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anybody know of one that doesn't charge a monthly fee? I have a product idea where I'd like to use mobile data as a backup in case of wifi network failure. So I'm willing to pay a higher per-MB fee if I can avoid a monthly per-SIM fee.

With global roaming? Maybe something like knowroaming, $8 for a day's unlimited data in 100+ countries. Not much good if you want to use 100kbytes a day, but for your use case it might work https://www.knowroaming.com/order/data-packages/160-global-u...

Roaming isn't necessary. And I want to use something like an average of 100kB per year, with many devices having a long period of no transmission (and being off network if that helps).

Re: Polish charity gets huge phone bill thanks to stork

#132

Post by kweks » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 5:27 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #130

kweks wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowroaming.com Essentially worldwide coverage, cheap rates, unlimited plans as well, no monthly fee, and only kicks in when you need it :)

Are you sure about that? As far as I can tell, the plans are all for limited periods.

Yup. You can purchase unlimited packages in a large selection of countries. Been using the service for years now. Amazing. And no need to swap Sims, or replace your home sim

Re: Polish charity gets huge phone bill thanks to stork

#133

Post by isostatic » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 8:07 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #131

isostatic wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With global roaming? Maybe something like knowroaming, $8 for a day's unlimited data in 100+ countries. Not much good if you want to use 100kbytes a day, but for your use case it might work https://www.knowroaming.com/order/data-packages/160-global-u...

Roaming isn't necessary. And I want to use something like an average of 100kB per year , with many devices having a long period of no transmission (and being off network if that helps).

Can you not use a PAYG sim? In the UK Three will give you a sim you have to use once every 6 months (a ping would do), charge £1 per megabyte.

Re: Polish charity gets huge phone bill thanks to stork

#134

Post by PMan74 » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 8:14 AM UTC

codetrotter wrote: post #10

PMan74 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And car companies presumably have global agreements e.g. I can drive my car across Europe and have all the navigation related stuff continue to work. But easier for Amazon or big car company to broker such an agreement. I think the question is how would Joe Public get something like this.

How many of those navigation systems use the internet though? Most consumer grade car navigation systems use offline maps.

I was thinking the same as I typed the comment but my assumption is that there has to be some kind of mobile data because of #1 live traffic updates & #2 map updates.

On #1 comment below says this is done by radio RDS

On #2 however there has to be a way to update the maps in the car as roads (new roads, closures, lane changes, speed limits, etc.) change. My assumption was that car makers hardly expect people to manually update these maps. And likewise could probably not live with the liability of years old data in the maps. But looks like I may be incorrect here http://updateportal.skoda-auto.com

BMW at least have actual SIM cards in the cars so original point stands.

Re: Polish charity gets huge phone bill thanks to stork

#135

Post by thunfischbrot » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 10:29 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #117

deepspace wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twilio charges a relatively low monthly fee per SIM, starting at $2/mo. See: https://www.twilio.com/wireless/pricing

That is relatively low, but definitely not low enough in my case. The price point I'm thinking of is ~$25/year; giving 96% of my revenue to Twilio would not work. The device in question would be on wifi, so I really only need the mobile data to communicate in the rare event of wifi failure. And even then I don't need much data.

Have you checked https://hologram.io/iot-sim-card/ ?

Re: Polish charity gets huge phone bill thanks to stork

#136

Post by MaxBarraclough » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 11:20 AM UTC

reubenmorais wrote: post #2

Only tangentially related to the article, but where/how do researchers get global coverage SIM cards that you can just put on a stork and expect to get data/calling wherever it flies? I've looked for this before but only found what seemed like tourist scams with very high prices per MB/minute.

Your question is a contradiction, no? As you imply, most SIMs will work just about anywhere, they'll just charge you an obscene amount for the privilege.

If you want cheap international telephony, there's a whole industry for travel SIMs, but they're often still pretty expensive to use in some countries.

The researchers' real mistake was using a contract SIM. Should have used a prepaid one.

Re: Polish charity gets huge phone bill thanks to stork

#137

Post by eric_h » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 2:49 PM UTC

namibj wrote: post #96

m0dest wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unfortunately, no carrier will do this. I suspect that this is because of administrative fees associated with simply allocating a phone number and the network overhead from having a device associate with cell towers when idle.

You don't need a phone number if you don't need to be called on one, and you don't even need to be actively tracked in the home location database if you don't need to be reached at low latency at all. Think low latency=incoming call, no loner low latency=hourly email check. The remaining overhead is just renewing the sim once it degrades and keeping database space to allow it to associate if it turns the gsm module o…

Is it possible for a SIM card to not have a phone number? My iPad has a SIM card for cellular data and it has a phone number even though it doesn't have a phone app.

Re: Polish charity gets huge phone bill thanks to stork

#138

Post by sandworm101 » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 10:48 PM UTC

toomanybeersies wrote: post #126

sandworm101 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> ~$30/GB Does that include Canada? That is about HALF the advertised rates where I am. The real rates, after all the fees, are inevitably higher. Please send a few storks my way. https://www.telus.com/en/bc/mobility/plans/

Is there a particular reason that BC has obscenely expensive phone plans? For comparison: I used to get a Spotify subscription, unlimited calling and SMS, and 1.5 GB of data for $30 in New Zealand. I now currently get 12 GB and unlimited calling+SMS for $40 in Australia.

Because we are too Canadian. We are too polite. We don't complain. We tend to just accept things. And there is little competition. So large corporations push consumers around.

Re: Polish charity gets huge phone bill thanks to stork

#139

Post by dspillett » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 12:57 PM UTC

detaro wrote: post #122

dspillett wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pro licences here. Can't say as I've found an option like that. Is it relatively new? I've not dug around terably recently. Everything else people have suggested either hasn't worked or did for a while then changed after an update.

Group Policy for Windows Update "configure automatic updates" can be set to "notify for download".

I'm pretty sure I've tried that and it reset itself a time later.

Looking again now, there seems to be no such option. I can defer updates for a fixed number of days (with separate settings for quality updates and feature updates), which might be useful if the defer is cancelled by a manual "check and install updates" rather than having to reset the setting to get them to install at a convenient time rather than waiting for them to go in at Windows' will at the end of the defer period.

Re: Polish charity gets huge phone bill thanks to stork

#140

Post by namibj » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 1:24 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #116

namibj wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need a phone number if you don't need to be called on one, and you don't even need to be actively tracked in the home location database if you don't need to be reached at low latency at all. Think low latency=incoming call, no loner low latency=hourly email check. The remaining overhead is just renewing the sim once it degrades and keeping database space to allow it to associate if it turns the gsm module o…

That would be ideal in my case. It's data only and I'd be happy to leave the GSM module off 99% of the time if that made things cheaper.

See https://www.quora.com/Do-all-SIM-cards-come-with-a-phone-num... for someone who seems to know a little more than I do telling us that the number is not necessary for the card to work.