Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta
twilio.com
twilio.com
Build a solar-powered device that you stick up in a tree in a forested patch near an urban center where kids go and have bush parties/bonfires/etc. The device would include a text-to-speech synthesizer. It's dormant most of the time, but designed to activate when people are around it at night. As the "admin", you get a notification when it turns on and can receive some low-res video/audio from the scene, and you can send it messages that are read aloud using the TTS synth.
I imagine it would be quite disconcerting if you were smoking pot in the woods and suddenly a voice in the trees started talking to you.
We never got it working, but when I see stuff like this sometimes I still think about it.
Both companies invested heavily in the projects and both failed badly.
One of the major issues was just getting a dev setup using all the proprietary stuff involved. Onboarding developers was just one issue.
Both systems tied together a bunch of partners, and the folks running both shows had no technical background. Nor their managers.
Order the SIM from the console makes things pretty easy.
Twilio has consistently delivered easy ways to access cell stuff. This is def a step in the right direction. It would be awesome to tinker with this product for sensor data.
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.
| $1 per device per month + $0.38 / MB.
Of course these prices depend on device volume. Twilio may be able to offer lower costs because of their scale, but perhaps Hologram can provide a better user experience because this is the only thing they do.
Doesn't seem too bad to me.
It's just a different business altogether.
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.
If you want to compare ATT to this offering, it would be fair to compare how much ATT for a single megabyte of pay-as-you-go international data. That price is $2.05 according to https://upgradedpoints.com/att-international-phone-plans/#:~....
They also won't give you a line for $2/month.
This platform has been around for at least 4 years iirc.
Hologram SIMs are price competitive here and allow devices to connect to the best network available without unfavorable network preference schemes.
Definitely difficult to parse.
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.
When we price custom for enterprise (i.e. specific countries, carriers, roll-out plan), the pricing becomes a lot more flexible. Should be seeing updates to that messaging soon.
For the car I have a ciggy socket.
Another use may be something like a device that warns if a locked, remote, storage area is accessed. In fact, almost any alarm system that lacks a cellular backup could add one pretty cheaply with this.
Last time I tried Programmable Wireless it was very lacking. Calls were not supported on roaming at all (so I couldn't test it as I'm outside the US) and SMS was very flaky; some texts outright bypassed the SMS to API routing and were handled by the upstream carrier directly.
There was also a "bug" where you couldn't send SMS to the SIM using an arbitrary originator number. I say bug in quotes because I'm sure there is some obscure reason for it (or is it to cover a limitation?) because the error code returned was custom and seemed explicitly made for this reason (and was not mentioned on any docs).
I understand it was in early beta when I tried it but none of these issues were resolved even years later.
_How does Super SIM compare to Programmable Wireless?_
Super SIM is a separate offering from Programmable Wireless. Our first IoT connectivity solution, Programmable Wireless, was developed in partnership with T-Mobile, allowing us to connect to T-Mobile’s global partner network and run on top of T-Mobile’s mobile core infrastructure. For Super SIM, we developed our own cloud scale mobile core that allows us to connect with multiple partners, offering a comprehensive, guaranteed list of tier-1 networks for your devices to connect to. Moreover, with Super SIM, we’re able to extend control to you as the developer by letting you choose which networks your Super SIMs can and cannot connect to. This is really important for IoT use cases where your hardware may not be compatible with all of the networks that are available in a country. While we offer a lot of our networks at the same price, there are some that may be more costly but can offer you more redundant coverage or coverage in more remote regions. You can choose which networks work best for your use case and your customers and take control of your connectivity.
_Does Super SIM support voice calling and SMS?_
Super SIM was designed with IoT use cases in mind that primarily use data. You can use our SMS Commands API to send machine-to-machine SMS between your device and your cloud but Super SIM does not support sending or receiving SMS from other phone numbers. Super SIM does not support traditional calling such as with a smartphone’s native dialer.
_Why can’t I send SMS with an arbitrary originator number with Programmable Wireless SIMs? Is this a bug?_
This is the intended behavior. When you send a SMS from a phone’s messaging apps with Programmable Wireless SIMs that message gets handled by Twilio’s Programmable SMS APIs. You cannot set the from number on those messages to a phone number that is not a Twilio phone number that you own. This prevents number spoofing which while it has valid uses, it’s often used for SMS spamming which Twilio takes very seriously so this is a limitation to that feature.
You are misunderstanding. I am not talking about sending SMSs from the SIM to the outside world. That would indeed open you up to spoofing and all kinds of abuse.
I am talking about the the other way around. I have a message from the outside world (whether received through a Twilio number but handed to my own application for processing so Twilio's context of the original sending number is lost, or from a different source like Slack or Telegram) and want to send it off to a SIM, using an arbitrary sender number to distinguish between conversations. This fails too, despite there not being any obvious abuse that I can think of.
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 global Sim and therefore a lead start. I haven't watched this space for a few years and forgot about them. Good for them!
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.
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.
Someone from HN should undelete your comments.
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 this really is the pricing, then it's definitely IOT focused instead of Programmable Wireless's more general focus.
The “starts at” that we have on our pricing page is for the cheapest priced networks we have in each country. For example, in the UK we have a number of networks that are $0.10 per MB but if you want to use EE it’s $0.20 per MB. With our Network Access Profiles, you can pick exactly which networks you want your Super SIMs to be able to connect to. If EE is the only network that services your area or works best with your hardware and is worth premium to use, you can enable it for your Super SIMs.
For now, we just have a pay-as-you-go pricing plan for Super SIM whereas Programmable Wireless has a number of different quota plans that let you commit to a minimum monthly spend per SIM in exchange for discounts as a way for you to self service into lower data costs for hungrier devices. Our pay-as-you-go prices are meant to just get you started. We don’t expect any of our developers to scale up their IoT business at these list prices. Once you’re up and running, you can connect with one of our IoT sales specialists to discuss volume discounts. Promise they don’t bite!
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 of the devices and network architectures in this space are made to literally wake up a few times a day and push/pull data, not keep idle connections up and running. Your "runaway loop" would kill the device's battery and cause a bunch of other red flags in such a topology long before it racked up substantial bandwidth charges.
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.
Their previous offering always went out through T-Mobile in the US which always added an unnecessary round trip across the Atlantic if you were in Europe.
Interesting data point the “home network” on the SIMs we used was Telefonica.
* Initial cost: $3/SIM
* Monthly cost: $2/SIM (you can inactivate it at any time)
* Data: $0.10 / MB
* SMS: $0.01 / SMS
Looks good for applications that only sends a small amount of data.
Another use case might be for tinkerers creating very low-bandwidth applications (e.g. a few megabytes/texts per month).
For anyone else I imagine it makes more sense just to buy a prepaid SIM and swap it out as-needed.
Examples include: fleet management vehicle trackers, meteorology sensors, centrally controllable streetlamps
These are commonly referred to as Internet of Things (IoT) applications.
These devices typically use a very small amount of bandwidth (relative to a mobile phone user) but need the reliability of being able to roam across multiple networks. Hence the relatively steep $100/GB.
_Is this intended for consumers or corporations?_
It's for developers! We try not to look at our offerings as being strictly for consumers or corporations, but rather for the developers who use them, regardless of where they work. We want any developer with an IoT idea to be able to pursue it, whether their team is one person or one hundred. (This is a common philosophy at Twilio and was the thinking behind offering pay-as-you-go pricing on nearly all of our products.)
_Could someone clarify the use-cases?_
Super SIM is designed for cellular IoT, where we often see use cases like fleet tracking, industrial field monitoring, or micromobility. But there are a lot of use cases for cellular, with new ones showing up every day. An interesting trend we’ve seen is the use of cellular connectivity for things like point-of-sale systems in places where you normally expect there to be Wi-Fi. By using cellular connectivity, these point-of-sale platforms are able to eliminate the variability that comes with each different customer’s Wi-Fi setup, offering their customers a much better out-of-the-box experience because their customers can simply turn on the system and get connected.
_It looks like it's $100+ for 1GB of data_
Our data prices start at $0.10 per MB but this pricing is meant to just get you started. We don’t expect any of our developers to scale up their IoT business at these list prices. Once you’re up and running, you can connect with one of our IoT sales specialists to discuss volume discounts.
I guess this is happening because it is a new account. ( Likely to combat Spam ).
https://www.twilio.com/docs/iot/supersim/available-networks#...
I think what happens is that tower leases in some protected areas can be hard to negotiate, so the cost/benefit ratio gets out of whack for new towers (amongst other issues with power, construction, and RF propagation in remote, mountain areas). Maybe someone with more knowledge can chime in.
In some locations, there just isn't any land to site the tower due to regs (national parks comes to mind, nothing except my Iridium hotspot works in parts of the Smokey Mountains), so there are no providers or a single provider who was able to swing a special case on an existing tower (water tower or similar).
With Super SIM you can also have access to multiple networks at once. For example, if you’re connected to T-Mobile and move to an area where there isn’t coverage, your device can automatically switch over to AT&T. This gives you redundant connectivity too in case any one network or tower goes down.
Matt, I’m not sure what the spam filter is latching in to, but you may want to try varying your opening line a little bit for each response.
Please, please, for the love of god, please add an "email" verb to the twiml language.
You can make it super restrictive if you need to - like you can only email addresses that you can prove you own ... or something.
All I want is to be able to cc: an email with certain SMS alerts and it takes a sendgrid account and write some functions and validate email @ sendgrid with real names and addresses and on and on and on ... just to send an alert to an email address.
For example, if each time your device checks in you exchange 50 KB of data, you could do that 20 times for $0.10. You can only communicate with your device twice using SMS Commands at $0.05 per SMS Command. SMS Commands are often used as a way of configuring some IoT hardware solutions where you can set configuration values over SMS or to communicate with your device if it seems like something is going wrong with its data connection. It's an extra way of interacting with your device that may be deployed into the field thousands of mile away from you."
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 at a beta of the software running at https://nbiot.engineering/
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.
But also anything that is centrally manufactured or managed but distributed globally. Imagine being able to buy and manage SIMs from one place regardless of whether your [connected thing] will be deployed in United States or in Timor-Leste.
Edit: After some googling, found out about cellular IoT and GSM/GPRS modules for things like Arduino. Will that work with these Super SIMs?
https://www.twilio.com/blog/super-sim-quickstart-adafruit-fo...
https://www.twilio.com/blog/super-sim-quickstart-arduino-mkr...
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.
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 for Europe. These are CAT-M1 and NB-IoT modules, and I usually use the CAT-M.
NB-IoT is a great idea, but depending on where in the world you are it might not exist. Also, Super SIM does not currently support NB-IoT. We have a different T-Mobile SIM for that. If you really want to go NB-IoT, then the SIM7020{x} is a good module to develop with, or the Quectel BC66.
There are also some great projects now running code directly on the cellular modules. Search github for Wiz-IO. Georgi is brilliant in what he's doing, and supports numerous languages running directly on the Quectel modules.
Companies that offer this aggregate connectivity through carriers across many countries which can vary widely in price, so they have to price in order to protect themselves in case someone only uses it in (insert most expensive region).
So you're paying premium for it to work many places. And it's intended for small data chunks that would be sent by things like IOT sensor clusters.
If you know you're only going to use it in (these N regions) you could possibly work with them to get a better rate and have them blacklist your traffic in the more expensive regions.
There are ... quirks. Turns out the SIM cards have a "real" phone number that you don't know about, so even though you're routing calls and SMS through your twilio number and outbound dials only show as the twilio number, you will still get random calls that don't hit the twilio network. My sim's "real" number is a detroit number, and I used to get a handful of collections calls on it from the previous occupant of that number.
Super SIMs can be put into any device that has a SIM card slot, including almost any cell phone, but they are not designed to be a replacement for your cell phone’s SIM card. Super SIM is specialized for IoT: it doesn't support traditional circuit network components used for traditional voice calling or SMS so these won't work like you expect. However, any apps that use data instead for chat or VoIP calling, such as iMessage or WhatsApp, will work. Overall, we wouldn't recommend using your Super SIM as your regular SIM for your consumer cell phone, although some people at Twilio have put Twilio SIMs into their phones to see what this is like :)
Does this mean that the number associated with the Super SIM would be classified as VOIP and rejected by certain systems that require a "real" number. For example using the new SIM in any phone number verification system that rejects google voice and other providers.
Hi Mat, obviously you aren't responsible for Programmable Wireless but I expect you probably work with the same folks. It would be really nice be able to identify a given number as wireless. I've been using Twilio as my everyday wireless provider for a couple years now (not that it's the typical use case or that I'm your typical customer) and this is one of the few issues I have with it and the only one that really impacts personal use. In general, you guys have created an incredibly powerful and flexible platform, thanks for all your hard work.
I have tried raising it (as it was mostly an oversight and could've been sorted by just asking T-Mobile to make changes to their config) but my impression was that nobody even cared looking into it and just declared "iMessage is unsupported".
That was my problem with it. The “number” it will associate is some internal T-Mobile number and not the Twilio number you would have assigned in the Twilio console.
Our other cellular connectivity solution, Programmable Wireless, which we developed in partnership with T-Mobile, has a NB-IoT SIM that you can purchase from us if you’re interested in checking out T-Mobile’s narrowband network. If you don’t have any hardware, you can purchase a Developer Kit for the T-Mobile USA NB-IoT network from our Console which comes with some hardware and a NB-IoT SIM.
The 2 flavors of Programmable Wireless SIMs, the normal one and the NB-IoT one, can be bought in "Starter Packs" that come with 3 SIMs that can be registered to any Twilio accounts. They don't have to be used with the same account so you can share them if you know anyone else interested in checking it out. As you scale up your solution you can get SIMs in orders as few as 10 that come preregistered to your account so you don't have to type in the registration codes for each one.
If you need hardware to get started with you can buy the Developer Kit for the T-Mobile USA NB-IoT network from Console that comes with some hardware and 1 NB-IoT SIM that you can register to your Twilio account.
For Super SIM, because we're in Beta, you can buy as few as 1 from our Console. That will come pre-registered to your account. Super SIM doesn't support Narrowband IoT but it does support an array of networks that do have LTE-M such as AT&T if you're interested in a similar but more widely adopted low power technology.
Does anybody use Twilio for banking 2FA? Many banks still use SMS and SIM card hijacking is easy nowadays.
One of their examples.
https://www.twilio.com/blog/super-sim-quickstart-adafruit-fo...
https://www.twilio.com/blog/super-sim-quickstart-arduino-mkr...
It's a SIM to enable IoT devices to connect to (almost) any available network. It is not cloaking the origin of the data, or even if it is, that's not why companies will buy this.