Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwawaysea | Hacker News Reader

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

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 :)

> 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.

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.

Yes but the data is crazy expensive for that use case.

Companies that offer this aggregate connectivity through carriers across many countries which can vary widely in price, so they have to price in order to protect themselves in case someone only uses it in (insert most expensive region).

So you're paying premium for it to work many places. And it's intended for small data chunks that would be sent by things like IOT sensor clusters.

If you know you're only going to use it in (these N regions) you could possibly work with them to get a better rate and have them blacklist your traffic in the more expensive regions.

you can use their normal programmable wireless for that. I did and pay $1/month to have a sim sit in a $30 Nokia dumbphone that the kids can use when they ride their bikes to the park.

There are ... quirks. Turns out the SIM cards have a "real" phone number that you don't know about, so even though you're routing calls and SMS through your twilio number and outbound dials only show as the twilio number, you will still get random calls that don't hit the twilio network. My sim's "real" number is a detroit number, and I used to get a handful of collections calls on it from the previous occupant of that number.

You would probably rack up hundreds or thousands of dollars per month in data charges.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com