I’ve got a couple of prototype projects that uses the Electron 3G with the Particle SIM in South Africa. It works well and I am very happy with it. I would however like to migrate over to the Boron as it seems to be the preferred device for cellular projects. There are plenty of 3G and 4G service providers with good coverage where I am located. Can anyone assist me whether the Boron 2G/3G or B Series LTE CAT1/3G/2G would work in South Africa.
If you go here and click on the Country Details tab and enter ZA in the country text field it will show you details for South Africa. You can choose the device and it will list compatibility and carriers and bands supported.
The Electron uses MTN and Vodacom.
The EtherSim Boron 2G/3G (BRN314) uses MTN, Vodacom, and Cell C.
The older Boron 2G/3G (BRN310) only used Vodacom.
The B Series SoM B524 (also Tracker SoM T524) uses MTN, Vodacom, and Cell C on 2G, 3G, and LTE Cat 1. This is the best long-term option, however at the moment South Africa is not officially supported on the B Series and Tracker SoM. It does currently work and doesn’t require any special configuration, but is not yet recommended for large fleet deployments.
I used the Boron in Mpumalanga with great success. However, to get your hands on a Particle Boron in South Africa is a mission in itself. Nobody sells it anymore. Maybe you have contacts who still carries stock. If so, please send me contact information.
I haven’t bought one since I am also struggling to get it locally. I will try and purchase is directly from Particle. The shipping is quite expensive though.
Hi Daniel,
Perhaps you can create a new topic here in the community and check if there are other people interested in buying Particle products in South Africa? If you are able to pull that out, the shipping could be divided into few people and make it a bit more accessible?
Best
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The official distributor is Micro Robotics, but they’ve never stocked the Boron for some reason. Diy Electronics do have it sometimes, but it’s out of stock at the moment.
I’ve also found the shipping to be a bit high. I’m not entirely sure why shipping to ZA is so high for UPS unfortunately. Adafruit has switched to DHL, but that’s still about $50 - but they’ve stopped selling the 2G/3G version for ZA.
I would recommend looking into the B524 - it’s trickier to get and does not support headers, but it’s super fast on LTE + has 2G backup.
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