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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 cou
by untog 7y ago
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.
- detaro 7y agoEven 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?
- dmix 7y agoYou 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).
- hahamrfunnyguy 7y agoI 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).
- byron_fast 7y agoI'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.
- sequence7 7y ago> 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.
- justkez 7y agoIf 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.
- lol768 7y agoNote 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.
- Aeolun 7y agoThat does not sound unreasonable.
- Moter8 7y agoThe 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 7y ago? 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 7y agoWhile 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 7y agoInteresting 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.
- zius 7y agoI am experimenting with GPS luggage tracking hardware with simple live-updates. This is potentially a great use-case.
- ficklepickle 7y agoThat'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.
- wesammikhail 7y ago> 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!!
- jon-wood 7y agoEven 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.
- reaperducer 7y agothe 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.
- sbr464 7y agoI have a few Symbisa and Particle units that work like this.
- andrewkirk 7y agoPM 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.
- subsubsub 7y agoWill 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).
- zachberger 7y agoGoogle 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.
- SiVal 7y agoWhat phone do you use for this or is it multiple phones, and what SIM or is it multiple SIMs?
- birdman3131 7y agoAmazon 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)
- sbr464 7y agoThey 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.
- joezydeco 7y agoThere'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.