[HH] IoT connectivity used by BigBelly

[Ethan Schwartz]

On 3/30/17 5:52 PM, Kurt Keville wrote:
> I would imagine you could get a pretty good bulk rate when you are 
> using as many minutes as Bigbelly...
>
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_mobile_virtual_network_operators 
>
>
> 2G should be sufficient, I suppose?
>

Buying in volume is helpful, but the reality is that Bigbelly's and 
other IoT devices like them usually send very little data--we're talking 
a couple of KB per day; so the real money savings is in getting 
contracts that keep the per-device cost low, and then minimizing your 
traffic while maximizing your data set.

2G data rate is more than sufficient, but the issue now is coverage--In 
the USA coverage shrank significantly this year when AT&T shutdown their 
2G network; T-Mobile is the only one staying up for now with a promise 
of coverage until 2020, and they are specifically targeting M2M / IoT 
customers still running older gear--I'm sure they're trying to pick up 
all the legacy business and hoping to grab a bigger share of the new 
business while they're at it; Europe will keep 2G up for longer, but 
some countries there are already shutting it down as well.

3G "sunset" writing is already on the wall too.

Hopefully LTE Cat-M will be a very long lived network option for IoT 
manufacturers.

-Ethan