How to select IoT M2M SIM card service

Question

I've searched and nothing came up on here. I've developed an Remote Monitor for small wind turbines in Peru, using and Arduino Uno, Raspberry Pi and USB Modem.

I want to try and reduce our monthly data costs (currently have a Claro peruvian SIM card in the USB modem, costing around $9 a month)

Has anyone got any experience with the numerous M2M (Machine 2 Machine) SIM companies that are available out there.

Hologram so far seem to be the clearest in pricing structure, numerous companies want to quote you.

https://hologram.io/pricing/

Our projects will be sending around 14 bits of data every 10 minutes. Any current users of other M2M sim cards your opinions and feedback would be very much appreciated.

Answer 1

I propose working with local MNO which has strong coverage in rural areas as well. It could be more cost effective option and would be showcase opportunity for MNO in M2M domain. You can ask them to provide prepaid numbers with only GPRS as active service.

They can create monthly renewal data package and assign it to one main account, other numbers are assigned as child account. All accounts including main account consume the data balance together from main account. With monthly top-up, numbers can stay active and provide data service to your M2M project. As I remember even 10 years ago, creating group accounts with common consumption concept was available in MNO billing systems, probably your national MNOs have it on their system.