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Comment by untog | Hacker News Reader

This is very cool tech, but it seems like a niche use-case. It's not made for consumers, and the vast majority of IoT devices barely move, let alone between countries.

But, if I were working for a haulage company and was interested in tracking, say, truck location, speed etc across the whole of Europe I could see this being a great way to do it.

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PM for the Super SIM here. The problem we're trying to solve here isn't so much that the devices moves between countries, that's somewhat solved, especially in the EU. We want to help companies that deploy devices globally simplify their logistics and supply chain by being able to use a single SIM regardless of the destination of the device.

Will there ever be a consumer offering along these lines? (i.e. i am travelling around and don't want to have to get travel SIMs in every different country I visit).

Google Fi is great for this. Wherever I land abroad I'm connected within a minute and pay the same data rate that I do while at home.

What phone do you use for this or is it multiple phones, and what SIM or is it multiple SIMs?

With Google Fi you have to have a Google Pixel Phone, and it just works. Google is a MVNO so they can buy tower time from any carrier.

Edit: And yeah it's a single SIM.

Unfortunately it's only available to US customers.

Amazon kindle used to do this back in the day. Then people started tethering them and then all the kindle 3's and before got limited to 50 mb/month. (Later ones just had no internet outside amazon/wikipedia iirc)

Unlimited 3G everywhere was why I bought mine. Never tethered it either, but it was limited just the same :/

Your carrier doesn't offer this already?

This exists, but pricing can be exorbitant and availability is heavily location dependent.

We won't build specifically for consumers, we're targeting customers with 1000+ devices. My plan is to move my T-Mobile consumer subscription to my eSIM on my iPhone X once T-Mobile supports it and then put a Super SIM in my second slot for global data.

This. My wife's company builds devices for ag tech. This technology is enabling to reach a global market.

I didn't get that from the product page. Perhaps it should say "Simplify your logistics supply chain with a single SIM solution regardless of the final destination for your device".

Totally missed what market you were going after.

Even if your IoT devices don't move, do you want to deal with 1-3 companies per country you deploy in and follow market changes there, or is that something you're willing to pay someone else to worry about?

You could sell something like 3g internet connected Kindles and without the overhead of some arrangement with a local carriers which Amazon had to set up with their WAN option (which also works globally).

> But, if I were working for a haulage company and was interested in tracking, say, truck location, speed etc across the whole of Europe I could see this being a great way to do it.

If you wanted to do that in the EU you just need a sim card with data from any EU country. EU rules on roaming mean that your sim will work across the EU just as it does from its home country. I agree this would be a great use case if you're not only tracking in the EU though.

If your routes are restricted to only EU countries, sure! Stray over the Croatian border to Montenegro, for example, and you'll be racking up the bills.

Source: knowingly burnt £10 trying to find somewhere child friendly for lunch.

Note that the EU rules apply differently to data than they do to voice and SMS usage.

A provider offering unlimited data in the UK can cap your data usage in Belgium or charge e.g. £8 / GB after you use 20GB of data.

That does not sound unreasonable.

The EU roaming rules are only valid for a certain time period.

I can't get a polish SIM card and use it for an entire year in Germany, for example.

? Yes you can. I use a Polish SIM card(with Play) and use it all year round in UK, except for the 2-3 weeks or so when I'm back in Poland for holidays.

While you probably can. The law is written to prevent use cases like this, to avoid a race to the bottom between operators in different countries. Which makes sense since infrastructure costs can vary largely between countries, so it'd be unfair competition.

Interesting that they do this because they know infrastructure costs vary between countries but they don't give a shit about the price of electronic goods, services, etc in the single market.

I was contemplating doing something similar, especially with eSIM on Apple Watch.

Calling you must be a bit of a pain. I just check and calling abroad from Lithuania is still 0.5 euro per minute...

No, I just have a dual-sim phone(OnePlus 5T) - for data and calls in UK I have a proper British sim. But whenever I need to call my family or anyone in Poland, I just dial from the second(Polish) sim, and call for free, using the minutes that come with my Polish contract(and they can call me for free on my Polish number as well). It's also pretty useful whenever I'm somewhere in the UK that doesn't have a good signal on my main network - then I can use the Polish sim to connect to any network that has the best signal and just use data off that card temporarily.

Then we leave EU, alas and no of the consumer friendly law applies.

Well, yes, it remains unseen what happens once brexit actually happens. But this solution works at the moment, and I can only imagine it can also work in other EU countries.

I am from Norway and we love you, Polish people. <3

If you use it for more than 120 days outside your home country your phone operator is allowed to query this and charge you.

Sure. This hasn't happened yet in all the years I've been doing this. Maybe it's because I don't use data on this card, only calls.

The relevant legislation has only been in force since 20170615 [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_roaming_regulat...

Bkess you for using ISO 9660, my friend.

Europe > EU

> it seems like a niche use-case

A niche market in a massive pool could still result in hundreds of millions in sales. Imagine every Tesla that needs to communicate with a server, every RaspPi, heck even iPads or what have you. The potential is pretty huge for a tech like this one so hurray for a more expansive tech!!

I am experimenting with GPS luggage tracking hardware with simple live-updates. This is potentially a great use-case.

That's cool! How do you deal with tracking while it doesn't have GPS signal?

WiFi I suppose, using a mapping from BSSID -> lat/long, like Mozilla Location Services or Combain.

What's the power consumption like from attempting to get a GPS lock? Luggage presumably spends most of it's life indoors. I imagine a WiFi scan uses less power than attempting to acquire a GPS signal.

I'm a hobbyist when it comes to hardware/IOT, I've been working on something similar but for RV's instead of luggage. Much harder constraints when it comes to luggage! RVs have power and room to spare.

Oh, you could put a small generator on the luggage wheels, to charge it a bit while wheeling the luggage around!

Sounds like a fun project.

Even if your IoT devices don’t move there’s value in putting them on a mobile network. Particularly for security focused devices if you put a SIM and a battery in it then you become resilient to someone cutting the internet line and power before breaking in.

the vast majority of IoT devices barely move, let alone between countries.

Yet.

One of the things holding back the development of truly mobile IoT is ease and ubiquity of connectivity. This tries to solve that.

Think of it as Amazon's Whispernet, but with far more penetration.

I have a few Symbisa and Particle units that work like this.

I'm assuming the reason this is positioned as an IOT product is because they need to sell some product based on the network access they are able to negotiate. If they get allowed to use the 911 and voice network, I can imagine the product will shift to consumer pretty fast.

I'm using it in Canada and although data doesn't work (despite their claims) I'm paying one tenth the cost of a local bargain cell plan so I can SMS.

They could move across countries/providers if you think of different use cases: devices on airplanes, boats, weather balloons, long range drones, shipping packages, luggage, etc.

Having a device not tied to a certain provider could allow a shipping container to pass between different owners without needing a proprietary device/plan.

There's at least one payment terminal company out there with a world SIM in their POS system.

It's not the cheapest way to do that kind of system, but deployment is an order of magnitude easier. Unbox it and go.

I was thinking the opposite. It'd be nice not having to purchase a new SIM in each country you visit (if the rates are decent, anyway).

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