We are pleased to release a new Billing Alert function. With this new function, a billing alert notification email will be sent automatically to the primary (root account) email address when your ongoing monthly bill total exceeds a specified amount.

By configuring an alert, you can be notified of unexpected charges that may occur due to abnormal data usage or other billable services, and proactively take control.

In addition, as the Billing Alert function uses Event Handler behind the scenes, a new "Monthly bill amount" Event Handler rule is now available. In addition to sending a notification email, you can configure a custom Event Handler rule to execute a webhook, invoke an AWS Lambda function, or perform other actions when your monthly bill total exceeds the threshold.

Please note that the ongoing monthly bill total is updated at regular intervals rather than in real time, so there may be some delay between the time the bill total exceeds the specified amount and when the notification email (or other actions if configuring a custom Event Handler) is sent.

For more information on enabling the Billing Alert function, please refer to the Billing Information documentation.

To set up a custom Event Handler rule, please refer to the Event Handler documentation.

We are excited to announce the release of a new subscription plan-K2! This subscription provides LTE and 5G coverage in Japan using KDDI.

The basic fee for plan-K2 is 330 JPY/month (tax included), and includes 300 MB of data traffic each month. Additional data charges apply if the amount of data used exceeds the included data.

plan-K2 is available as a 3-in-1 (standard, micro, and nano) SIM card as well as an embedded SIM (eSIM). For additional SIM details, please refer to the SORACOM IoT SIM Datasheet (Japanese).

To learn more about plan-K2, please refer to Soracom IoT SIM for Japan: Usage fees (Japanese).

Soracom Virtual Private Gateway (VPG) is a network service that allows customers to create a dedicated private network for their Soracom Air for Cellular and Soracom Arc devices. When creating a VPG, a set of global public IP addresses are dynamically assigned to the VPG in order to provide networking services, such as routing connections to the Internet. When an Air for Cellular or Arc device connects to a server, the connection will appear to come from one of these IP addresses. Since these IP addresses are dynamically assigned, they may change from time to time.

A Fixed Global IP Address option is available, which reserves the IP addresses assigned to the VPG. With this option enabled, connections from Air for Cellular or Arc devices will always use the same IP addresses. This makes it possible to set up a firewall on your server to only allow traffic from these IP addresses while blocking other traffic, and other access control security measures.

We are pleased to announce that this Fixed Global IP Address option, previously offered on a Limited Preview basis, has reached general availability (GA). You can now enable this option directly from your VPG settings.

Please refer to VPG: Fixed Global IP Address Option for configuration details, and to Pricing & Fee Schedule: Virtual Private Gateway for pricing information.

We have made a number of improvements to the Virtual Private Gateway (VPG) management screen of the User Console:

• VPG settings and options are now better organized and can be accessed from the redesigned menu.
• The list of groups attached to the VPG now also shows whether or not each group's VPG setting is enabled.

For additional information about VPGs as well as VPG settings and options, please refer to the Virtual Private Gateway documentation.

We are pleased to announce that our new planX3 subscription plan is now available as a Subscription Container which can be added to an existing plan01s SIM.

planX3 is a new global subscription plan that provides 2G, 3G, and 4G/LTE coverage in 89 countries, as well as LTE-M (LTE Cat-M1) coverage in 12 countries including Japan, Germany, France, and the United States.

For complete details on pricing and available countries and regions, please refer to SORACOM IoT SIM Pricing (Japanese).

Since planX3 is now available as a Subscription Container, you can add it to an existing plan01s SIM in order to gain access to the network coverage and pricing provided by planX3, without the need to purchase a physical planX3 SIM card or eSIM or to replace your current plan01s SIM.

Adding planX3 to an existing plan01s SIM

The planX3 Subscription Container can be added to any plan01s subscription from the User Console. Existing plan01s SIM cards and eSIMs are both supported.

For more information on Subscription Containers, device requirements, please refer to the Subscription Container documentation.

As of March 1, 2022, prices for the following Japan-only devices have been revised. Prices are in Japanese Yen (¥) and include Japanese consumption tax.

Antenna for 3G/LTE Cat.1/LTE Cat.M Module HW-MULTI-GA-RSMA

• Old price: ¥1,078
• New price: ¥1,188 (includes a ¥100 Soracom platform service coupon)

For more details, visit the product page (Japanese).

We are excited to release the S+ Camera WP v2.1, the latest in the S+ Camera series of edge AI cameras, which is suitable for installations in outdoor environments.

S+ Camera WP was previously available as a Limited Preview to a limited number of customers. Based on customer feedback, the updated S+ Camera WP v2.1 now features improved waterproof and dustproof performance.

• Supported subscriptions: plan-D (built into the device)
• Availability: Japan only
• Price: 109,780 yen

For more information, please refer to product page (Japanese).

Please note that with this release of the S+ Camera WP v2.1, S+ Camera WP (Limited Preview) (Japanese) will be discontinued.

Soracom is pleased to announce the launch of planX3, a new global subscription plan with 2G, 3G, and 4G/LTE coverage in 89 countries and regions. planX3 also supports LTE-M (LTE Cat-M1) connectivity in 12 countries, including Japan, Germany, France, and the United States.

planX3 also features a simplified subscription price of USD $1/month, which includes 5 MiB of data traffic each month, making it ideal for small data volume applications. Pricing for additional data usage in excess of 5 MiB ranges from $0.073/MiB in Japan and APAC, to $0.037/MiB in the United States, and $0.02/MiB in major European countries.

For complete details on pricing and available countries and regions, please refer to SORACOM IoT SIM Pricing (Japanese).

Purchasing planX3

At this time, planX3 is only available to customers located in Japan. If you are located outside of Japan and are interested in purchasing planX3, please contact us.

For customers located in Japan, planX3 SIMs can be purchased from the SORACOM IoT SIM Card Type (planX3) (Japanese) product page. You can also purchase planX3 SIMs from the User Console (Japanese).

Soracom provides a command line tool soratun that can be embedded in a device in order to easily set up and connect to the Soracom platform using Soracom Arc.

Until now, when bootstrapping a device using soratun, credentials for connecting to Soracom Arc needed to be stored in a configuration file in the device's local file system, such as arc.json, which soratun can then subsequently use to connect to Soracom Arc.

With this update, you can now pass the configuration obtained from the bootstrap process directly into soratun in order to connect to Soracom Arc without storing a credential file.

This update adds the following options:

• --dump-config for use with the soratun bootstrap command.
• --read-stdin for use with the soratun up command.

With these two options, you can now pass the configuration directly in the following way:

soratun bootstrap --dump-config | sudo soratun up --read-stdin

In addition, the following options have also been added so that optional configuration parameters can be specified together with soratun up --read-stdin:

• --additional-allowed-ips
• --mtu
• --persistent-keepalive

Note that in order to pass the configuration directly into soratun, you must use either the Bootstrap with Cellular or Bootstrap with SIM bootstrap methods. The Bootstrap with AuthKey method is not supported.

For more details, please refer to soratun Command Reference for details.

The existing soratun bootstrap command can still be used while storing the configuration locally.

Package20™ (Japanese), a set of 20 image recognition algorithms for S+ Camera series which was previously provided free of charge for a limited time, is now available at the regular price of ¥9,800 (tax included). Package20™ can be purchased from the S+ AI Market in the SORACOM Mosaic Console.

• Purchasing 3rd party algorithms from the S+ AI Market (Japanese)

Note: SORACOM Endorse (Japanese) is required to verify the installation of third party algorithms on S+ Cameras. Please refer to the above document for instructions on enabling Endorse.