Sigfox subscription renewal

[Eric73]

Hello, i post here because i am little bit disappointed. I have buy a lopy4 an started to use Sigfox to my project. So i have with my lopy4 one year of sigfox connectivity. I want to secure my project and have investigated a little bit about what will happen when the one year contract will end.
I found no information about what is the process to continue my connectivity contract. In some place i found that https://buy.sigfox.com/buy/offers/FR will be the place to buy connectivity. BUT as you can see i cannot buy less than 10 subscription (yes i am in france). In some other place i have seen that a webshop sell sigfox connectivity https://yadom.fr/abonnement-1-an-sigfox-140-mgs-jours-340.html for 31.2€ (nearly the price of a new lopy4 (as this time i seriously think about buy a new lopy in one year) !

So PYCOM SALE perhaps can you become a SIGFOX connectivity reseller ? that will help your customer and it seem to be a place that nobody use.
Thank to your feedback, if any one in france know how to renew a SIGFOX subscription (for less than 60€), and other user if you have an easy way or some difficulty, feel free to share here your experience.
( For exemple our german friend have the facility to use https://buy.sigfox.com/buy/offers/DE as single one year subscription for 17.5€ )

[robert-hh]

@eric73 Looking at the offerings between France & Germany, alsol the offerring per device differs. For France, it is 2 messages/day at 6€/device within a 10 device bundle, for Germany it's 140 Messages/Day at 17.5€ per device.
If you go to 140 messages/day in France, the price increases to 14€/device and 10 devices minimum.
Netherlands offers the same /140 price as Germany, but allows to buy smaller message amounts, like 50 at 11.24€. You can also check other countries like Singapore (15 SGD), Spain, JP with 800yen = ~6 € for the 50 pack, ...
I wonder if it is possible to buy packages in another country. At least inside the EU by law this must not be prohibited.

[Eric73]

@robert-hh i have think about this possibility but i have heard (in fact with my job we are already a sigfox customers but i have no contact inside sigfox) that a device must have send it's first uplink in it's origin country before doing roaming to another country ( lot of gsm-sim vendor have the same politic), so use a pac number to buy a connectivity for germany isn't for me a safe way to continue my contract as my device is static an going to germany a little bit far for me. (but perhaps i confuse sigfox practice with gsm practice). I have try to contact sigfox-france but no answer from them at tis time. it's a silly politics to doesn't allow someone in france to buy single renewal but allow it from a lot of other country ! (In fact sigfox was originaly birth in france near toulouse )

[nespressif]

Hello everybody,

I spoke some time ago with Sigfox Spain (in Madrid) and they told me that they sold personalized packages according to the needs of the client. It's absurd to be forced to buy ten subscriptions if you only have one device.

Recently someone commented in the forum that he had renewed the contract of his Sipy and did not say that he had to buy more subscriptions.

I'm interested in this topic because I have several Sipy and I want to know what to do when I have to renew the subscription. Anyway I think it's best to talk to Sigfox in your country.

Regards,

[dan]

Hi everyone, I've reached out to Sigfox, I'll follow up when I've got a reply.

[Eric73]

@dan Big thank you dan, we started to feel lonely with our problem (.
When i have buy my lopy4 2 years sigfox connectivity was displayed one the web page. After that, it seem to be an error and connectivity was in fact one year. OK, sigfox doesn't seem to be expensive so i dont care to paid after the first year BUT in my country buy.sigfox doesn't allow to buy single device connectivity and doesn't answer to email to explain what to do...
I have take a look to objenious or orange if they offer lorawan contract for individual customers (having sigfox or lorawan for my projet is not realy different due to low datarate production) but neither one open their network for individual. So, in france it seem to be at this time no solution for using my lopy after the first year. So You carry all my hope :-)

Can you ask sigfox if i buy a subscription in other country (ex:germany) can i use my lopy4 in france without trouble (i dont whant to have to travel in germany to activate my contract) ? I understood they will not change their process/website/business for a single customer, i only want to know how i can continue to use my lopy on sigfox.

[dan]

@eric73 We were not notified of the 2->1 year change either. 1 year is now default to all devkit providers. I hope this issue in France (and anywhere else that this is the case) can be solved. I'd say they won't support you getting a subscription from another country, if they would they wouldn't have country specific plans. (this is just my thought, not Sigfox's comment)

[jmarcelino]

@eric73
For Sigfox the usual agreement is that the device manufacturer also offers to sell the service for their devices, in the LoPy4/Sipy example this means Pycom would sell you further Sigfox subscriptions.

The buy.sigfox.com site is usually more for bulk buys - for example if you are creating your own Sigfox device. There are however no restrictions on country other than having to provide a company address in your desired country...

If Pycom won't sell Sigfox connectivity another option is to use a broker such as Soracom - https://www.soracom.io. I know they offer individual Sigfox packages. Once you sign up you can register your device at https://console.soracom.io/#/sigfox_devices

[Eric73]

@dan I don't be upset to have one year first subscription intead of two with lopy4. What bother me is what happen after the end of current sigfox contract ? I don't see the way to have my hobbyist-product to still work after the first year, as you said sigfox have different country way of work and in france (perhaps in other country) i cannot found how to renew connectivity. Even on ask.sigfox.com there's no clear information about what i have to do ?
All sigfox vendor (like soracom) have the same business plan to feed there web interface/database with the data sent by the sigfox device under their contract, in my design i prefer to work with sigfox callback define in the sigfox-backend (as it work actually), it's more simple .

[dan]

This is the answer I received from Sigfox. Hope this answers some of your questions.

"Each Sigfox Operator decides the content of their packages, unfortunately they are not all offering 1 device only (mostly for billing reasons), this hopefully will change next year. As there is transparent roaming between countries, users could also select another country in the list."

[Eric73]

@dan Thank you for your feedback. It's silly for me to have to pay in another country to continue my sigofx connectivity but if there's no other solutions.... In fact it's not just a roaming, if i transfert my PAC to another country i have to move my callback (if available in the new seller) to there interface and use a fake postal address to proceed...My sigfox data frame will not be available to the sigfox backend (by only on the new seller interface). I still have little hope that sigfox france will open individual subscription when time come to need to renew my connectivity but it's a race again time.

[andrethemac]

In Belgium it is not possible to buy directly form Sigfox. I have to go via Engie, but they have no option for private people, only companies. So unless I start a (small) company I have to switch to something else (lorawan?) for my things. Lora via the ThingsNetwork is great but as are not (yet) very widespread in Belgium I can only use it around my (lonely) gateway. None of the other lorawan providers seem to have a non-commercial offering (or won't/don't answer any questions).
Yes I'm just an hobbyist.

[trojanc]

I know this topic is very old, but I think the original question is still valid.
Wouldn't it be possible for Pycom to resell sigfox licenses in a similar way you are selling NB-IOT simcards?

I've tried to go the proper route in South Africa (via Squidnet). After chats with them they referred me to another company that makes their own devices. Then they try and sell me their devices and say they can't really just give me a Sigfox license. This is really useless in my mind... Why does anyone then even sell these Sigfox enabled boards if after a year you can't do jack with it...

[Eric73]

@trojanc Well, i have a talk with a sigfox founder. First news about this topics is Sigfox France Network now sell device subscription by year for one device.

Unfortunatly this will not help you in this case, sorry. It seem that kenya and south africa is not still available on buy.sigfox.com, as all technical event is off i dont know where i can see someone from sigfox in futur to ask us some news.