
Twilio Super SIM - galfarragem
https://www.twilio.com/wireless/super-sim
======
32032141
I've been wondering for a while what the purpose of all the NB band LTE stuff
is even for. The going rate is often around 40c/MB in most countries (lower on
Twilio by the looks of it, but the same order of magnitude), which seems like
there's some very specific high value-per-byte application intended. Some of
the technologies people are touting for very long battery life have
transmission latencies of 10+ seconds as a trade off, which makes the
applications for it even more restricted.

It feels like the result is going to be that literally every device you can
purchase will have a always connected LTE lojack attached. Imagine trying to
firewall or restrict the network in your business when literally everything
has its own backbone, it'll be a complete nightmare.

~~~
walterbell
There are also LEO satellite networks on the way.

Is it feasible to use physical RF shielding for devices?

~~~
namibj
Shielding by enough to throw any common network off is certainly feasible.
Metallized non-opening windows (reflect IR from the sun to save on HVAC),
metal plates or thin meshes on the outer walls and either rotating doors or a
combination of rf-absorbing walls and a convoluted path to the inside that
prevent radio waves from getting in through the door. I'd assume you can
feasibly add 60 dB shielding to a building with that. More is obviously
possible, there are conference rooms with advanced shielding of >100dB against
industrial espionage. They use fiber optic communication lines to the outside
because you want all electrical connections to be very heavily filtered to
prevent conducting radio waves through them.

~~~
walterbell
Thank you! Are materials like these suitable:
[http://lessemf.com/fabric.html](http://lessemf.com/fabric.html)

------
emdowling
Twilit has been on an absolute tear over the last 2 years. I wasn’t sure what
they would do next to innovate, but their evolution to customer support
products, authentication solutions and now this are inspired.

What sets them apart is that, although they are a US company, they think
globally. This product is for a global market, just like their app-based push
authentication is (the huge market being Europe which has mandated 2FA
requirements for finance companies coming into effect). Too many companies
build and think about the US as the only market, then try to bring it to other
markets which doesn’t always work well.

~~~
contingencies
Counterpoint. While Twilio is interesting, I wonder what percentage of their
business is simply multifactor authentication. Having previously used a wide
range of companies for SMS connectivity (including multilingual, flash SMS,
contact forwarding, and raw PDU features), and implemented VOIP systems with
privately owned physical PSTN interface infrastructure, recently I looked at
Twilio for inbound VOIP and SMS services across three Asian jurisdictions. It
fell far short of our requirements, which were basic (phone and SMS on the
same number, one number per country).

~~~
razakel
>phone and SMS on the same number, one number per country

Was this actually possible if you'd used the local carriers directly? There
could be some regulatory reason, like differences between cell and landline
numbering plans for billing.

~~~
tiernano
mobile phone numbers can receive both sms and calls, so a mobile number would
work, but you are right. it seems (in Ireland anyway) that getting a mobile
number for VoIP stuff is fairly hard... you would need physical SIM cards and
hardware...

------
untog
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.

~~~
sequence7
> 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.

~~~
Moter8
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.

~~~
gambiting
? 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.

~~~
kabes
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.

~~~
dqybh
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.

------
davidnetten
This product is intended for use in IoT devices and not really for 'iPhone
use'. A few things to consider:

First of, in the telecom market, there are two ways to get a discount: Buy
more SIM cards, or buy more data. Let's say you offer a track-and-trace
product, have deployed 1000 GPS trackers, you can easily get the monthly fees
and the usage fees down to cents. Same goes for your 'GB-per-month' personal
phone subscription, you buy more data, you get it cheaper.

But since roaming will always be costly, even for wholesale carries, SIM card
subscriptions that can be used globally are almost always A. expensive, or B
intended for IoT (low usage). (GPS, trackers, sensors, feedback buttons, etc).
Twilio is focussing on the latter with this SIM.

That brings us to NB-IoT and LTE cat M.

LTE cat M(machine) is basically a stripped down LTE modem, while an NB-IoT
modem (or LTE cat Narrowband) is a stripped down LTE cat M modem. Network
parameters for these types of connectivity have been tweaked in favour of
power consumption at the costs of low bandwidth and high latency. You could
say that LTE-M is used for 'MB's per month'-devices (smartwatch for example)
and NB-IoT is used for 'bytes per month' devices (is my container full
already).

NB-IoT is cheap, extremely power efficient, but is not intended for moving
devices.

LTE-M can be used for more demanding applications, like smartwatches, panic
buttons (including voice) etc. It can also be used in roaming applications,
but that's it. No streaming video etc.

So if you are looking to deploy a large scale IoT application, you want cheap,
simple and energy-efficient hardware, which is why you need NB-IoT or LTE-M.

You could go for other technologies like Sigfox or LoRaWan, but they are
inferior to NB and LTE-M if you ask me (roaming, availability of
network/hardware).

In my view, Twilio does a great job of offering all kinds of telecom services
(one stop shop), a common strategy in telecom called 'bundling'. But if you
know what you want and where to look, you can get much better rates... Margins
are great on this, I can assure you that :)

------
fermuch
How is this different to Hologram[1] or EsEye[2]?

Hologram seems to offer an api with as much access as twilio's (data usage
report, switching between "networks" (what package you buy, which includes
certain countries and pricing...) and monthly payment of a fleet of chips. I'm
failing to see the added value of twilio, but the more competency the better!

[1]: [https://hologram.io/](https://hologram.io/) [2]:
[https://www.eseye.com/](https://www.eseye.com/)

~~~
sjtgraham
I wish folks would abstain from making "how is this different to X?" comments.
They add very little to the conversation.

~~~
dylanz
I actually like alternative solutions listed when something is posted on HN
that I know nothing about. It's obviously best when the poster does some
homework and lists the largest differentiators. I've seen the question "how is
this different to X?" used, more often than not, in more of a combative
context however where the user defends an alternative and then points
negatively at the original.

Just my $0.02 and I"m sure there's a better format that could be used, just
not sure what that is exactly :)

------
fyfy18
At a first glance the pricing of $0.10 - $0.025 per megabyte in Europe seems
somewhat expensive. The wholesale rate is €4.50 per gigabyte or $0.005c per
megabyte. I assume the markup covers the cost of maintaining the account and
the access to many networks worldwide. Can anyone who is already using GSM
data in "IoT" devices comment on how much this compares to what you pay now?

~~~
bufferoverflow
€4.50/GB is absolutely insane for Europe. In Italy you can get 50GB for €7
From Kena or ho.mobile (€0.14/GB) or 50GB for €8 from Illiad (€0.16/GB). All
at 4G speeds.

[https://www.kenamobile.it/prodotto/kena-6-99-limited-
edition...](https://www.kenamobile.it/prodotto/kena-6-99-limited-edition/)

[https://www.ho-mobile.it/](https://www.ho-mobile.it/)

[https://www.iliad.it/offerta-iliad.html](https://www.iliad.it/offerta-
iliad.html)

~~~
watermelon0
Wholesale rate is for businesses where they pay for the actual usage, and
consumer-oriented providers, which you mentioned, oversell network capacity.

~~~
remus
There's overselling and then there's assuming that the average user is only
going to use 3% of their allowance! That seems pretty optimistic. Having said
that presumably the wholesale rate varies quite a bit between countries, and I
assume some contracts are offered as loss leaders.

------
rsync
Twilio: If anyone there is listening, please, _please_ give us an <email> verb
in twiml ... it's the simplest thing and would be tremendously useful.

I don't want to host offsite code or write complicated functions just to CC:
an SMS to my email inbox ...

A <email> twiml verb would be simple and useful.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Didn’t Twilio buy an email provider that would make this straightforward to
implement?

Edit: SendGrid!

~~~
rsync
As of the completion of the sendgrid acquisition, there is no email verb for
twiml. Your only options are to host code on a third-party and call it from
Twilio (sendgrid could be that Third party) or write a Twilio function.

But the easiest way to do this, by far, would be a simple email verb in Twiml.
No dice so far…

------
scurvy
Until they actually ship and make it GA, I reserve the right to call this
vapor ware like the rest of the Twilio announcements in the past year. When is
VPN for programmable wireless going to ship? Never?

~~~
andrewkirk
PM for Super SIM here. We're running this as a closed beta now, hard at work
getting it to GA.

~~~
scurvy
Don't announce a beta unless it's available for public sign up. Or just wait
until the product is GA...like a regular company. Otherwise it leads to
customer disappointment and disillusionment.

Just pull VPN for programmable wireless from your site. It's clear that it
won't launch within a year or two from being "announced".

~~~
chrisseaton
> Don't announce a beta unless it's available for public sign up.

Many betas are closed. That’s not unusual.

~~~
scurvy
It's not unusual but it's not a good idea. Just keep it confidential until
ready, or ship a MVP and launch it as a real thing.

------
mtw
Can this do voice calls? I'm in Canada where every cell plan is more expensive
than any other in the world. I have friends who purchase plans from Europe and
then use the SIM locally with roaming - turns out it be 10x cheaper, the only
drawback being that they have a foreign number

~~~
32032141
This isn't for personal use, so no calls. The data rate is probably around
2-5c/MB for Canada (though its not on the pricing list, that seems to be
average), which puts it above even Rogers consumer plans. Google Fi is
intended for consumer use and is 1c/MB in Canada (up to a cap, and then
unlimited).

~~~
rsync
"This isn't for personal use, so no calls."

Very little of Twilio is for "personal use" but you can still deploy it as
such and there is another class of Twilio SIM product (programmable SIM) that
you can do anything (voice, sms, etc.) you want with.

I have built my own little personal telco out of twilio and couldn't be
happier ...

Well, except for an <email> verb in twiml - _that_ would make me much happier
...

------
vertis
I got really confused when I first saw this and though it was something for
consumers not IoT devices (Sorry twilio team for the application for access
_shrug_ ).

I really wish someone would nail this for consumer phones. I'm coming up on a
year away from home in various countries and the constant sim swapping is
beginning to get annoying.

I actually bought a dual sim phone so that I can keep my Australian sim card
in for 2FA security sms messages (etc).

Before someone suggests it, Google Fi is US only, unless you want to arrange
for a reshipper (and even then, I'm not sure if it works).

~~~
mcrae
I’m totally with you.

The dream would be to have a single SIM which roams globally and to which you
could attach multiple numbers from various countries.

Closest I’ve found is [https://www.truphone.com/](https://www.truphone.com/)
but they seem not to offer individual plans.

~~~
wittedhaddock
Why do you want multiple numbers? Doesn't something like Whatsapp or FaceTime
help prevent you from needing them?

~~~
mcrae
Mostly for business. Maybe some people are comfortable to Whatsapp you, but
it's inappropriate for a lot of situations.

Also, in a lot of places you need a local number to get things done. Like when
making reservations at restaurants or you leave your number in the POS to have
them text when a table is ready, etc.

As it is, I have a dual SIM Android phone as well as an iPhone and have 3
postpaid plans in different places. Massive pain.

~~~
wittedhaddock
Got it, so it's the recipient who matters. If whatsapp let you send it out as
a plain old SMS from a number you can select, and receive their SMS as a
whatsapp message, would it solve your problem?

------
zrail
Slightly off topic. I’m trying to find a SIM for my LTE modem (AT&T/T-mobile
bands) that I got as a backup for my Comcast service. I’m looking for pay as
you go with no or minimal monthly fees, a reasonable 4g price, and a fallback
to unlimited 3g.

Does anyone know of a data plan like that? I tried to use Twilio Wireless but
they don’t have the fallback option.

~~~
subway
A Project Fi data only sim is probably your best bet.

~~~
umeshunni
Unfortunately that also requires a regular Fi account to be active ($20/mo)

------
obiefernandez
Can I use this in my mobile phone?

------
lol768
What's with the poor data pricing? These plans seem like a non-starter for
_any_ application that's remotely data intensive. At $50 / month you're going
to get a total of 4GB in the USA. That's just unworkable for streaming video
for e.g. remote CCTV applications.

It seems like if you're doing anything interesting that uses more than
insignificant amounts of data (beyond e.g. reporting GPS coordinates) you're
better off taking out a business contract with a mobile network and using the
roaming allowances built in there. E.g. you can get 3x the 4GB data that was
billed at $50 by taking out a £15 business SIM contract from Three which
incidentally will give you up to 1TB in the UK.

~~~
yaantc
> These plans seem like a non-starter for _any_ application that's remotely
> data intensive.

Yes, and this is by design. LTE NB-IoT is very different from the regular
broadband LTE people are used to. It's made for devices that send a (short)
message once in a while. Really, it's best to think about it as for small
message oriented applications --- no data stream.

To be low cost, a NB-IoT has only one receive antenna not two (or more) for
regular LTE. Also, to reach into basements and harsh conditions, NB-IoT
supports many repetitions. In theory up to x2048 times regular LTE, although
most networks won't go that high. This means that the spectral efficiency of
NB-IoT is much, much lower than for regular LTE. One byte over the air can
cost a lot of resources, but it's ok because it's made for application with
very little data to transmit: a meter level, a position... The data plans
telcos sell for NB-IoT will forbid using a lot of data, it's just too
inefficient. What NB-IoT needs to be is 1) low cost and 2) low power. For a
meter sending one report per day, one can target a lifetime of 10+ years for
example.

So although NB-IoT can use the regular LTE channels, it really is a completely
different kind of animal. LTE-M is similar, but a bit bigger / higher
throughput. Still for small IoT applications, but with more data than NB-IoT
can accomodate.

If NB-IoT is a scooter, regular LTE is a truck. If you can fill the truck,
it's more efficient. If you can't, because all you have to deliver is a pizza,
then a scooter is best. Use the right tool for the job.

------
andrewfromx
I could be wrong, please correct me if I am, but doesn’t hologram offer all
these same things?

------
walterbell
_> Add new IMSIs through over-the-air updates on a platform with global
resilience and redundancy._

How big is the IMSI namespace? How quickly will Twilio put IMSIs back into a
shared pool? Will they retain logs of IMSI-eSIM mapping?

------
ForHackernews
This sounds very similar to the Truphone SIM:
[https://www.truphone.com/us/consumer/sim/](https://www.truphone.com/us/consumer/sim/)

~~~
zemvpferreira
I wonder how a card-based solution will compete with e-sim. Seems like
twilio’s advantage will be reduced to demand aggregation once e-sims are
popular. Anyone have thoughts on differentiation in this space?

------
diminish
Yay! We are approaching the SIMless world where you connect to mobile networks
without a SIM or a universal SIM.

~~~
tw1010
You make it sound like this is a trend, but this article is the first instance
I've ever heart of the concept of a universal SIM?

~~~
astatine
The technology has been around for several years now. There was reluctance
(naturally) by the telcos in letting this happen, but applications are
demanding it now bringing it more into the mainstream from the niche it used
to occupy earlier.

------
gz5
At scale, will the price get to a point at which this can be a second
interface?

Maybe used as an OOB management plane interface for OTA updates, remote
diagnostics etc? Perhaps used for some_other_use_cases in which second global
interface would be useful?

Would there be isolation and security benefits to that type of second
interface?

------
zachruss92
Their programmable SIM is super cool to me. I have been considering making my
own DIY version of a light phone. Super SIM is interesting for IoT
applications where you have something that crosses a wide geographic area
(like freight). I'm very curious to see where this goes.

------
jtl999
Don't know if anyone else has, but I've seen so called "global SIM" with multi
IMSI type functionality from so called "secure phone" providers in the past.

Interesting

------
gigatexal
So could one use this as an international works anywhere sim?

~~~
rsync
I don't think this class of SIMs that Twilio offers are voice capable ... they
_do_ provide tmobile SIMs that _are_ voice capable, but they call them
something different ...

~~~
dqybh
You can always use OTT voice.

------
tom169
The business use that immediately comes to mind is tracking, such as for
vehicles. Often cars are stolen in Europe and moved between countries.

------
flyGuyOnTheSly
Forget IOT, I want this for my phone!

It sounds almost too good to be true.

~~~
walterbell
Google Fi has $10/GB global LTE for US residents. Multiple SIM cards sharing
the same plan, works on non-Google devices too, including mobile hotspots. In
the US, they use T-Mobile.

~~~
tibiapejagala
It's amusing that they went through all the pain of making a global SIM to
make it available only for the US residents.

------
ignoramous
This is great (one plan worldwide, but in places with weak currency like
India, paying in dollars might turn out to be expensive), but overall isn't
the industry moving in the direction of eSIMs (no physical SIM required)?

Moreover, once OneWeb, Starlink and the like launch worldwide internet
service, it might pretty much render the telecom industry as it is today
irrelevant?

~~~
wongarsu
I think we can expect Starlink to have similar coverage to GPS: great in the
country, useless in my bedroom in a multi-story building. Also the expected
receiver size for Starlink is an order of magnitude bigger than the one for a
cellular network.

For phones, tracking, etc the cellular network would still be superior.
Something like a car might go with both starlink and cellular because anywhere
where one is weak the other is likely to be strong.

~~~
ceejayoz
> great in the country, useless in my bedroom in a multi-story building...

I'd think it'd work a bit like cable/DSL often does in an apartment company -
one receiver for the building.

~~~
wongarsu
Or put in on the side of the building like regular satellite dishes. But
realistically any apartment building that's not in the middle of nowhere will
be better served by fiber anyways. Once you have multiple customers in the
same building they will quickly feel the limit of how much bandwidth you can
push to a small area throught the air from 500km away.

------
gandutraveler
Google Fi should roll out something like this. They already have good global
coverage and prices

------
sbr464
I’d be curious to hear from the folks at Particle.io on the
offering/competition.

------
hellllllllooo
Any idea what the approximate pricing per GB is and how it scales with more
devices?

------
netsec_burn
I will wait for WiFi via Starlink, connectivity will be everywhere.

------
xenospn
Isn’t that exactly what Hologram does?

------
wintorez
This can be a game changer.

------
I-Iuw
From a product perspective, this is really confusing.

Twilio make business-facing APIs, is this supposed to be a consumer product?
Why would I want API access to my own usage data? This feels like a far cry
from their strategic strengths, except for that it’s phone-related.

~~~
32032141
This is for Internet of Thing usage, the customer is a company who is making
Internet Widgets with some need to be able to communicate no matter where
their Internet Widget is operating, without necessarily having to configure or
prepare for the destination.

------
tjbiddle
Nope. Not going to happen. I don't care about a multi-purpose SIM. I want
cheap data.

I keep my T-Mobile SIM for when I fly into the US, I reload it for $30-60 and
use it for a month. I'm rarely in the US.

I get back to Indonesia, I go to the local SIM store and buy 50GB of data for
~$13. With Twilio rates I'd be paying $1,250-5,000. Pass.

~~~
detaro
You do realize that this is not a product for end-users at all?

