For a communications platform like Twilio, getting into wireless always seemed like a logical next move and a year ago, the company did just that with the beta launch of its SIM-based Programmable Wireless service for IoT. Now, a year later, the company is taking this service out of beta and making it generally available.
With this product, Twilio hopes to become the de facto standard for IoT developers — just like it did for developers who want to add text messaging, notifications and calls to their services. The company argues that there are currently few easy to use options available for actually connecting devices to the cell network. And for developers who are already familiar with its products, Programmable Wireless is a logical choice given that it’s the same kind of API-first approach as the rest of its platform.
“Despite the hype surrounding the internet of things (IoT) over the last several years, IoT has been largely out of reach to developers because there has not been a developer-friendly connectivity provider,” said Chetan Chaudhary, general manager of IoT at Twilio. “Twilio Programmable Wireless makes connectivity accessible to millions of developers via Twilio’s platform, empowering them to begin experimenting with IoT. We can’t wait to see what they build.”
The service will work in more than 120 countries and developers are charged according to how many SIM cards they are using and how much data they transfer. They can also enable voice services over the cellular network and use traditional SMS text messages for machine-to-machine data transfer.