[ComputerGuru]

The problem is that fixed part of most plans’ pricing make the cost prohibitive, not the pay-as-you-go component (eg the cost of a sim and phone number).

We were able to use a LoRa-like layer to forward to a base station that then uses a VoIP provider to do the brunt of the communication work.

[pjmlp]

I hardly use more than a couple hundred from my 5 000 monthly budget to external networks, on the same network they are free.

[ComputerGuru]

I think I failed to convey my point clearly. My point is that if you need a separate sim per IoT device, the (possibly monthly) cost of a sim and number will greatly exceed the cost of messages sent.

[pjmlp]

About 15 € every couple of months, maximum 3 months allowed without charging, is the cheapest pre-paid I can remember around here.

[ComputerGuru]

That makes sense. The provider incurs an ongoing (trivial to them in bulk) cost for leasing you the number so they can’t let them go stale - although three months is definitely more than lining their pockets. My VoIP provider charges a fixed 99c/month for each unique phone number. 15 € for three months is cheap for personal purposes when you have just a few in the field but isn’t sustainable for large scale deployment. I continue to be impressed by what can be accomplished in the 915 MHz ISM band; it’s not LoRaWan proper but you can achieve non-line-of-sight communication over a hundred and fifty miles (at obviously incredibly slow bitrates) with some signal conditioning magic. It would be amazing to spread a network of these around the world to enable constant low-bitrate communication without a base rate for pure pay-as-you-go options.