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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hi there, Matt Jackson from Twilio here. I’m the Product Manager for Super SIM. Glad you're familiar with Programmable Wireless, our other cellular connectivity offering!
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!
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.
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.
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 :)
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".
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).
> 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.
> it doesn't support traditional circuit network components used for traditional voice calling or SMS so these won't work like you expect.
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.
Good question. Super SIMs actually don’t have a phone number that is publicly addressable. You could use a Twilio phone number and our voice SDK to wire up VoIP calling to and from a device; however, Twilio phone numbers will be treated as VoIP numbers and can often not be used for verification systems.
> Twilio phone numbers will be treated as VoIP numbers and can often not be used for verification systems.
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.
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.
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.
Hi there, Matt Jackson from Twilio here. I’m the Product Manager for Super SIM, and I can try to answer these questions:
_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.
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.
I really appreciate Twilio's features that limit unexpected costs. I have a personal Twilio account I use to tinker, and to run a simple phone system for my small business, and I would be super worried about doing that if it was like AWS where the best I could get was alerts. Instead Twilio let's me charge my account upfront and disables it if I hit that cap. It's great peace of mind for smaller users.
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).
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.
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.
https://www.twilio.com/blog/super-sim-quickstart-adafruit-fo...
https://www.twilio.com/blog/super-sim-quickstart-arduino-mkr...