Hello All,
I am working in a company that makes prototyping using a particle electron. I assume that there is a global shortage of particle electron (australia/american ) model. I am thinking of using particle electron(asia/europe) model in australia with 3rd party SIM. Whereas, I noticed that the bandwidth in australia is 900/1800. same bandwidth supports in particle electron ( Europe/asia). Kindly please pour your opinion.
I am using the “Europe/Asia” Electron with Sara U270 modem (900MHz/2100MHz) in Australia. It works very marginally with the Particle SIM, as that SIM uses the Telstra network, and the only band the U270 can use with Telstra is 2100MHz. Unfortunately, most Telstra 3G is provisioned using 850MHz, which is not supported by the U270.
As my application is mainly driven by SMS, I have simply put in a Vodafone SIM and it works very well. I am testing with a $10 prepaid Vodaphone SIM (365 days, 2c/MB data), and I’ve noticed it’s never charged for data - so far - maybe because particle IO never gets over the minimum session threshold.
However, if you want to use the data-only Particle SIM, then I strongly advise getting the “Australia/USA” Electron with the U260 modem (850MHz/1900MHz). While this can still only work on the 850MHz band (no carrier in Australia uses 1900MHz), this is the better provisioned band for Telstra.
It’s really unfortunate that Particle chose not to use the Sara U201 version, which covers all 3G bands world-wide, and would work better in Australia both with Telstra (3G 850 and 2100) and Vodafone/Optus (3G 900 and 2100). At bulk, wholesale prices, it would only have cost them another 10-15US/chip. I’d’ve paid a premium for that version!
HTH
Andrew
Thanks for your reply, it is really helped me to choose between the models.
I would really appreciate your effort and time to give your response.
The new E series uses a universal Sara-U201 module that covers all bands used by Telstra, Optus and Vodafone. The down side is that it uses a hardware sim (great for reliability) but it can only be set up for Telstra networks. A great shame given the availability of much much cheaper plans for modest data (250 Mb) with Optus and Vodafone based suppliers than the Particle/Telstra plans.
There is an application note on the Particle website that deals in detail with setting up Electron on third party sims.
Hey all!
Thanks to @ScruffR and @mdma for catching that, it’s not often we see people pretending to be Particle employees or community moderators!
edit: in case you didn’t see, someone created an account and claimed it was a Particle employee, and was talking about availability of devices.
Just as an FYI, Particle employees and moderators will never ask you for your passwords, or other sensitive account or device information. If you’re not sure if an account belongs to a moderator or admin or particle employee, we have special badges near our names like so:
If you see other fake accounts that are trying to mislead people or steal information, please bring it to the attention of a moderator or admin. 
Also, we tend to have a “works at Particle” badge as well: https://community.particle.io/badges/112/particle
Thank you!
David
