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> The biggest challenge with the whole setup was finding a SIM from a provider who would let me top it up once per year and maybe send half a dozen texts in tha
by jll29 5y ago
> The biggest challenge with the whole setup was finding a SIM from a provider who would let me top it up once per year and maybe send half a dozen texts in that time without deactivating the SIM, for a reasonable price
Good point - so-called "pre-paid" SIMs seem to be hidden subscriptions nowadays. Does anyone have a table of suitable low-usage, long-term SIM vendors?
- sbarre 5y agoLooking at B2B IoT services is one way to find prepaid SIM plans that don't require monthly top-ups, but usually you have to buy 5+ SIMs so it doesn't necessarily fit the single-device use-case...
- dspillett 5y agoYou might want to say what location you are in for a truly useful answer. In the UK at least most providers keep the SIM active if it sees some activity in a given space of time¹ irrespective of top-up activity². So if “low” use stretches as far as one text every month or two maybe just have it send an “I'm still here” message regularly. Also acts as a double-check that not getting alerts means all is OK instead of that the alerting service is broken. 1: the GiffGaff one I used for pure data for a week-and-a-half when my landline was down in2020, shut off after three months and a few nagging texts IIRC 2: though if you don't top-up once per month you usually drop onto the basic tariff, so no more “unlimited texts”, but if you are topping up that infrequently that is probably fine
- actually_a_dog 5y agoWhat would be the answer in the US?
- toomuchtodo 5y agohttps://www.twilio.com/iot/super-sim-card https://www.twilio.com/iot/super-sim-card is one example. Search for “US M2M SIM” for more vendors.