
Twilio Super Sim – Public Beta - samdung
https://www.twilio.com/docs/iot/supersim
======
adriand
I've always thought it would be fun to make experimental hardware devices with
this type of technology. An example:

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.

~~~
Confiks
I can imagine such a device would be quite disconcerting to Winston and Julia
as well, hidden away in a natural clearing; around a tiny grassy knoll
surrounded by tall saplings that shut it in completely.

~~~
stjo
Orwell underestimated our ability to make surveillance devices tiny and
sprinkle them everywhere

~~~
jamestimmins
He also underestimated our willingness to buy our own surveillance devices and
put them in our homes

------
bredren
I worked on IoT projects for two major wireless carriers both trying to sell
hardware integrated with data management. I think the idea was to sort of
create value-added services on top of the dumb pipe.

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.

------
Nextgrid
If you're interested in this space, Hologram does the same thing (and appears
to have had a head start compared to Twilio):
[https://hologram.io](https://hologram.io)

~~~
dominotw
what are some of cool products built with this tech.

~~~
alasdair_
My mailbox is in a block of other mailboxes that is fairly far from my home
(say, 500m) and out of wifi range without an especially large antenna. I was
thinking of making a small battery-powered widget to tell me when the mail
arrived and adding it to my Home Assistant ([https://www.home-
assistant.io/](https://www.home-assistant.io/)) installation.

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.

~~~
simcop2387
LoRa WAN and such tech can be very useful for this.

~~~
alasdair_
Thanks! I hadn't seen this!

------
Nextgrid
Curious as to how does this compare to "Programmable Wireless" and whether it
supports calls and SMS? It's not clear whether it's an evolution of
Programmable Wireless or something totally separate. I tend towards the latter
because the documentation is separate between both offerings.

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.

~~~
matjaxon
Hi there, Matt Jackson from Twilio here. I’m the Product Manager for Super
SIM. It’s great to hear that you tested out Programmable Wireless and your
feedback is appreciated.

_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.

~~~
Nextgrid
> This is the intended behavior.

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.

------
gk1
Looks like a killer of all other IoT connectivity solutions (eg, Verizon,
AT&T, Particle). Those IoT platforms better find a way to support third-party
SIMs, if they don't already.

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!

~~~
Gamemaster1379
Particle has a number of devices that already support third party SIMs (their
Electron and Boron lines in particular).

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.

~~~
Ductapemaster
Thanks for the mention! I'm an employee at Particle, and this is exactly it.
I'll be honest and say that dealing with carriers _sucks_. If you want to
bring your IoT device to market, you want to focus on building that device —
not negotiating with AT&T or Verizon. We protect our users from that so you
can focus on your core competencies and shipping your products.

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.

------
MichaelApproved
@matjaxon - A lot of your comments here are getting deleted. If you're not
deleting them yourself, I suspect it's because you're making a lot of comments
with a new account and getting caught in the spam filter.

Someone from HN should undelete your comments.

~~~
matjaxon
Thanks appreciate the heads up! I reached out to HN and they verified my
account. Always ever been a lurker and made an account today. You were spot on
about why they were getting caught in the filter.

------
cordite
Viewing this site took 4.5MB with trackers.

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.

~~~
matjaxon
Hi there, Matt Jackson from Twilio here. I’m the Product Manager for Super
SIM. With Super SIM you can configure a data limit for your SIMs as a
guardrail against potential runaway applications. You can set this to a value
as low as 1MB. If you know that your use case doesn’t require a lot of data,
such as occasionally sending a little bit of JSON with some sensor readings,
you can set this to a low number to keep your costs down in case something
does go awry.

~~~
AdamJacobMuller
Is there any way to contain or firewall the SIMs such that they only have
access to specific networks? That seems like the holy grail of avoiding people
buying IoT devices for their SIM (e.g. what happened with early kindles and
many other devices).

~~~
matjaxon
Great question! Super SIM has a feature called Network Access Profiles that
lets you pick exactly which cellular networks you want your devices to be able
to connect to. A lot of other cellular solutions, Twilio’s other cellular
connectivity solution included, give you really rudimentary control such as do
you want access to the United States (yes/no) and do you want the rest of the
world (yes/no). Network Access Profiles lets you pick exactly which countries
and which networks inside those countries you can connect to so you can build
access just the networks that you want to.

~~~
AdamJacobMuller
What I mean more is, once those devices are connected to "the network" is
there a way to limit the usage of those SIMs so they could only connect to my
systems, and not connect to "the internet" at large.

~~~
webmaven
Seems like that's something you would design into the device itself (or
rather, its software), whitelisting allowed domains or IPs.

~~~
GordonS
I've done exactly this before when building an IoT device.

------
pheeney
Could this be used as a sort of sporadic consumer phone service? For example
signing up for services that require phone validation but want to protect your
real phone for privacy. Activate the SIM, signup, verify, then deactivate.
Repeat if they don't recognize your device or when you need to re-verify.
After hardware costs you would be looking at $2/mo any time you needed it.

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.

~~~
gruez
I suspect the phone numbers will still show up as a voip number, which is
probably be an issue for sms validation.

~~~
Nextgrid
There are carriers out there that sell "real" numbers at least here in the UK.
I'm sure the same exists elsewhere.

------
sjtgraham
Have been using these and they work really well. One thing though is because
Twilio is the carrier the internet breakout is via AWS so you will have AWS
public IP addresses. We went back to the original Twilio wireless because the
breakout is on T-Mobile IP ranges.

~~~
Nextgrid
Do you know what the latency is and whether they're doing some magic around
roaming where the data session is terminated locally?

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.

~~~
sjtgraham
I really don’t know the answer to that. The latency wasn’t noticeable for me
but I’m in SF. Breakout was coming from us-east-1. I believe traffic will
always go via Twilio anyway but I don’t know if they have a multi region
setup.

Interesting data point the “home network” on the SIMs we used was Telefonica.

------
ProZsolt
Pricing:

* 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.

------
celicaraptor
How does this compare to buying some Internet with Legs sim cards which offer
200MB per month for free(includes Europe and USA)
[https://www.ebay.com/itm/10-X-THREE-3-NETWORK-INTERNET-
WITH-...](https://www.ebay.com/itm/10-X-THREE-3-NETWORK-INTERNET-WITH-
LEGS-3G-4G-DATA-Sim-Cards-Wholesale-Job-lot/133250430852)

------
jamexcb
Surfroam is 10x times cheaper for data! Is 0.01/MB
[https://surfroam.com/pages/rates](https://surfroam.com/pages/rates) No fancy
online platform. But is a LOT cheaper. The card is 15€ but has 15€ of data!

------
xrisk
Could a potential use case be soldering these onto consumer electronics and
phoning home telemetry even if the user doesn’t connect to WiFi?

~~~
Jtsummers
Yes. So long as you have a subscription service (or are willing to eat the
cost). This is how many home security systems handle things these days. No
need for a phone line (which can be cut) or wifi (which is lost with a power
outage). A control panel and the sensors have batteries that continue
operating despite power loss and network outages.

------
lowmemcpu
Is this intended for consumers or corporations? Could someone clarify the use-
cases? It looks like it's $100+ for 1GB of data

~~~
wrkronmiller
I imagine it's best-suited for corporations making devices that can be
deployed to arbitrary countries. It looks like you're paying an enormous
premium on data for the ability for this sim to "just work" internationally.

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.

------
ksec
@Dang, I am seeing lots of valuable replies from @matjaxon from Twilio being
shown as [dead]. I presume all these replies wont show up normally as most
have their HN settings as default.

I guess this is happening because it is a new account. ( Likely to combat Spam
).

------
rsync
No verizon support, unfortunately ...

[https://www.twilio.com/docs/iot/supersim/available-
networks#...](https://www.twilio.com/docs/iot/supersim/available-
networks#north-america)

~~~
matjaxon
Hi there, Matt Jackson from Twilio here. I’m the Product Manager for Super
SIM. You’re right, we currently don’t have support for Verizon but we hope to
be able to add it in the future. We understand that different developers have
different connectivity preferences, so we designed our system to be flexible
to adding new partners to the platform. As we continue to add networks, the
networks of the future should become available to Super SIMs bought today.

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.

~~~
rsync
Matt - off topic, but since I have someone from Twilio here ...

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.

~~~
matjaxon
Hi there! That's a bit out of my wheelhouse but I shared your message with
some Twilio Sendgrid email folks to take a look.

------
polishdude20
What's the difference between an SMS command and just sending data? It says
they charge 10 cents for a Mb but 5 cents for a data command. Can I just send
a command that is less than a Mb and save money?

~~~
makaimc
Twilio Developer Evangelist here. Our Super SIM Product Manager @matjaxon had
his comments held up since he has a new HN account so I'm passing this along
from him: "You could send the same information to and from your devices using
either SMS Commands or data but it would likely cost you a lot more to use SMS
Commands. While our prices start at $0.10 per MB, we bill you in bytes.

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."

~~~
polishdude20
Ah ok, so it's not a thing you'd use for constantly sending commands.

------
bborud
It is interesting to see how many telcos have failed at building IoT
connectivity products that work. If you work for one of these, feel free to
reach out.

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/](https://nbiot.engineering/)

~~~
mleonhard
A couple of suggestions for the landing page:

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.

~~~
bborud
btw, why do you say "woman"? What if that is a person with non-binary gender
identity?

------
jtdev
Think cargo ship containers and other similar internationally transient use
cases. Sounds like an exciting product/service. Looking forward to seeing how
this is used.

~~~
gk1
Trucks, containers, ships, cars...

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.

------
ilaksh
What type of IoT device would I install this SIM in? Are there SBCs that come
with a place to plug in a SIM and everything else needed to run it? I thought
all of those types of things were made for phones.

Edit: After some googling, found out about cellular IoT and GSM/GPRS modules
for things like Arduino. Will that work with these Super SIMs?

~~~
matjaxon
Yep Arduino's or RaspberryPis are solid platforms to get started with. We have
a couple quickstarts that you can checkout.

[https://www.twilio.com/blog/super-sim-quickstart-adafruit-
fo...](https://www.twilio.com/blog/super-sim-quickstart-adafruit-fona-32u4)

[https://www.twilio.com/blog/super-sim-quickstart-arduino-
mkr...](https://www.twilio.com/blog/super-sim-quickstart-arduino-mkr-1400)

~~~
jsjohnst
Just to confirm, but a GSM module won’t work for AT&T (but will for the time
being for T-Mobile) in the US, right? To my knowledge, AT&T has shut down most
(all?) of their GSM network and is only LTE (in its various flavors).

~~~
jsjohnst
Just to circle back here, seems the official date of AT&T shutting down their
2G (GSM/GPRS) happened in Jan 2017. Their 3G (HSDPA/UMTS) network is
tentatively scheduled for about 1.5yrs from now.

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.

~~~
humancell
Yes ... I work for Twilio as an IoT SE - there are a lot of great and
inexpensive modules that you can use. Stay away from anything 2G/3G as they
are being shut down as bands are being reallocated. Also, avoid the "quad
band" solutions that are advertised.

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.

~~~
jsjohnst
I’ve been using Sierra Wireless Cat-M1 modules for the projects I’ve been
prototyping as they include an ARM Cortex A7 and GPS too in a single package.
Bit expensive on the BOM, but convenience makes it worth it. Will test them
with this once I get a chance.

------
throwawaysea
Apologies if this is a dumb question - can I use this on a person phone for
consumer use cases (voice/text/data)?

~~~
matjaxon
Hi there, Matt Jackson from Twilio here. I’m the Product Manager for Super
SIM. This is definitely not a dumb question. In fact, all of us on the Super
SIM team have really enjoyed reading this thread and learning what you have
questions about!

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 :)

~~~
Nextgrid
Last time I tried Programmable Wireless, iMessage explicitly didn't work; the
activation text (sent in the background to Apple to verify your number and
activate iMessage) was being swallowed by the underlying carrier and ended up
verifying the internal number of the SIM (a T-Mobile number) instead of being
delivered to me through HTTP (so I could route it myself through the Twilio
number I wanted to use as outgoing).

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".

~~~
matjaxon
You can use iMessage if you use it with only data but that does limit your
ability to only using iMessage with other iMessage users. When you put the
Programmable Wireless SIM in your phone you'll be prompted to associate that
number with iMessage, if you deny it, then you it won't pick up that number on
the SIM with iMessage. I personally use this solution when traveling out of
the country with a Programmable Wireless SIM in my iPhone. It "works" but
unfortunately in a limited manner (i.e. data only).

~~~
Nextgrid
> Wireless SIM in your phone you'll be prompted to associate that number with
> iMessage

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.

------
VectorLock
Do these services just support 1 or 2 sims? I can think of a few hacky
projects to use these for. I think T-Mobile was going to start offering NB-IOT
starting at $5 but I don't know how many minimum units or other stipulations
they have.

~~~
matjaxon
Hi there, Matt Jackson from Twilio here. I’m the Product Manager for Super
SIM.

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.

[https://www.twilio.com/wireless/narrowband](https://www.twilio.com/wireless/narrowband)

~~~
VectorLock
Do you support accounts with 1 sim?

~~~
matjaxon
We don't have any minimums on accounts but there are normally a minimum number
of SIM's come in an order depending on which item you're looking to get.

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.

------
xwdv
Looks great, we're using a similar product for building a massive guerrilla
network of solar powered IOT devices in strategic locations collecting some
alternative data for hedge funds.

------
paulcarroty
Great service, a lot of ideas for usage.

Does anybody use Twilio for banking 2FA? Many banks still use SMS and SIM card
hijacking is easy nowadays.

------
ben174
Any examples of getting one of these plugged into a Pi and having a script
listen for SMS events and respond to them?

~~~
Jtsummers
[https://www.twilio.com/docs/iot/supersim/getting-started-
sup...](https://www.twilio.com/docs/iot/supersim/getting-started-super-sim-
raspberry-pi-sixfab-cellular-iot-hat)

One of their examples.

------
lyime
What hardware would you recommend?

~~~
matjaxon
Arduino's or RaspberryPis are solid platforms to get started with. We have a
couple quickstarts that you can checkout too.

[https://www.twilio.com/blog/super-sim-quickstart-adafruit-
fo...](https://www.twilio.com/blog/super-sim-quickstart-adafruit-fona-32u4)

[https://www.twilio.com/blog/super-sim-quickstart-arduino-
mkr...](https://www.twilio.com/blog/super-sim-quickstart-arduino-mkr-1400)

------
yalogin
So this does not provide the wireless stack just the sim. But with software
SIMs these days why is a piece hardware needed? Is it a bit late to the party?
Particularly for IoT devices, given the wireless stack is anyway needed along
with the RF, it makes sense to cut out other SIM in favor of software.

~~~
mallets
What do you mean by software SIM? I haven't heard or seen any such modules.
eSIMs exist but still hardware. Maybe something based on SDRs can emulate
them.

------
Animats
So, it's a VPN for cellular data, right?

~~~
gk1
How did you arrive at that?

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.

~~~
Animats
That's what a virtual private network is - an overlay on transport networks to
allow a group of devices under the same ownership to communicate. While VPNs
are often used to cloak IP addresses, they were originally a corporate thing.
Your in-house net could be transported over the public Internet while keeping
its in-house address space and some degree of privacy.

