IoT SIM Cards
Cellular data for the things
that are not phones.
A tracker that sends a few kilobytes an hour and a phone that streams video all evening are the same thing to a consumer plan, and priced as though they were. An IoT SIM is sized for the device instead: plans start at 50 MB a month and run to 300 GB, on the T-Mobile network, billed by us on the same invoice as the rest of your service. Activation is $5 per SIM and the card is included. There is no minimum order — one SIM is a perfectly good order.
What Goes On Them
Fleets and field assets
Telematics units, ELDs, dashcams, trailer and container trackers, and the cold-chain sensors watching temperature and door state on a load in transit. They move through places with no network of their own, which is why they are on cellular at all.
Utilities and remote sites
Smart meters, grid and substation sensors, RTUs and SCADA endpoints, tank level monitors, and the environmental sensors on a solar field or a wind site. Mostly small, frequent reports from somewhere nobody is going to run a circuit to.
Retail and payments
Card terminals and mobile point of sale, self-checkout lanes, kiosks, digital signage and in-store analytics hardware. Also the failover on the store router, so a cut fibre upstream stops being a day with no takings at the tills.
Healthcare devices
Remote patient monitors, connected glucometers, personal emergency response pendants, telehealth hubs and pharmaceutical cold-chain transport. Equipment that has to work in a patient’s home without ever touching their Wi-Fi.
Cameras, alarms and access
Jobsite and perimeter cameras, body-worn devices, entry systems, gates, and the backup path on an alarm or access panel. A camera on a pole has no other way to report, and a panel on a single wired path has no second opinion.
Buildings, during and after
A construction site needs connectivity from the first trailer through to handover, and the gateways, controllers, energy management and building sensors left behind keep needing it for the next twenty years.
Plans and Prices
Every plan is a monthly allowance on one SIM. Go over it and the SIM keeps working, billed by the megabyte at the rate beside it.
| Plan | Per month | Over the plan |
|---|---|---|
| 50 MB | $2 | $0.012 per MB |
| 100 MB | $4 | $0.012 per MB |
| 250 MB | $6 | $0.012 per MB |
| 500 MB | $7 | $0.009 per MB |
| 1 GB | $9 | $0.009 per MB |
| 2 GB | $16 | $0.009 per MB |
| 5 GB | $37 | $0.009 per MB |
| 10 GB | $50 | $0.009 per MB |
| 25 GB | $108 | $0.009 per MB |
| 100 GB | $150 | $0.003 per MB |
| 300 GB | $200 | $0.003 per MB |
How the Data Works
Each SIM carries ordinary outbound data on the T-Mobile network: the device dials out to your platform or your server, and the platform answers. That is how the large majority of connected equipment is built.
The plan is per SIM
Each SIM carries its own plan and its own allowance — a 1 GB SIM gets 1 GB. Nothing is shared across the fleet, so a quiet device does not fund a busy one, and a busy one cannot drain the account.
You can change size
A device that turns out to send four times what anyone estimated moves up a plan rather than running on overage every month. Tell us and we change it; there is no new SIM and no visit to the site.
Overage is published
Going over does not stop the SIM working. It bills at the rate for that plan tier, listed in the table above, and if it keeps happening we would rather move you up a size than keep billing you for it.
Already On Our Network
If you are replacing analog lines, the gateways on our POTS Line Replacement page take one of these SIMs directly — as a backup path behind the wired connection, or as the only connection where there is no usable network at the site. The 1 GB and 10 GB plans in the table above are the two we fit most often. Voice for those lines runs on our SIP trunks, and it all arrives on one bill.
IoT SIM Questions
What is an IoT SIM, and why not just use a phone plan?
The difference is sizing and lifespan. A consumer plan is built for a handset that moves gigabytes and gets replaced every couple of years, and it is priced that way. An IoT SIM is sold in sizes a device actually uses, starting at 50 MB a month, and is meant to stay in a machine that will still be in service in ten years. The cards themselves are also built for it: an industrial SIM is rated across a far wider temperature range than the one in your pocket, which matters when it lives in a cabinet on a roof.
Whose network is it?
T-Mobile. Nationwide LTE and 5G, including the LTE-M and NB-IoT modes that low power devices use. One network stands behind these SIMs, so coverage is T-Mobile’s coverage — check their map against your sites before you order and you know what you are getting.
Will it work in my device?
If the device takes a standard SIM and works on T-Mobile, yes. It needs to be unlocked or already provisioned for T-Mobile, and it needs to support the LTE bands and the radio mode it is going to use. Tell us the make and model when you ask and we will check it rather than guess.
What size SIM card do you ship?
Standard, micro and nano — 2FF, 3FF and 4FF — on the usual break-out card, so one part fits whichever slot the device has. If your hardware takes a soldered MFF2 chip instead, tell us at order time.
How is the data metered across a fleet?
Per SIM. Each one carries its own plan and its own allowance, which makes a fleet easy to reason about and easy to audit — one line, one allowance, one rate. It also means a single misbehaving device can only ever spend its own data, not the whole account’s.
What happens if a device goes over its plan?
It keeps working. The extra data bills at the overage rate for that plan tier, listed in the table above. If it happens twice we will usually suggest moving that SIM up a size, because the larger plan is cheaper than the overage almost every time.
Is there a minimum order?
No. One SIM is a perfectly good order, and plenty of them are — a single cellular backup on one gateway is a common first purchase. Fleet quantities are welcome too; tell us how many and what they are going in.
Do I have to be an existing customer?
No, but most people who buy these are already on our trunks or our phone systems, and that is the point of buying them here: the SIMs land on the same invoice, with the same support number and the same people behind it.
Tell Us What You Are Connecting
The make and model of the device, roughly how much data it sends, and how many of them there are. We will tell you which plan fits and what it costs a month.