We have added new features to the Pricing Calculator and SORACOM IoT Store (Japan) to improve the process of estimating and purchasing IoT SIMs and IoT devices.

New Features in the Pricing Calculator

• The contents of an estimate (such as item quantities) are now stored in the URL, allowing you to save a bookmark and reload an estimate, or share the estimate using the URL.
• After creating an estimate, you can now click the Order Items button to add items from the estimate to the SORACOM IoT Store cart, allowing you to conveniently purchase products from an estimate.

New Features in the SORACOM IoT Store

• When adding products to the cart in the SORACOM IoT Store, you can now click the 見積書を作成する button to load the selected products in the Pricing Calculator, allowing you to make an estimate for services before before making a purchase.

For more information on how to use the Pricing Calculator or how to purchase items from the SORACOM IoT Store, please refer to the following pages:

• Create an Estimate (Japanese)
• How to Order (Japanese)

As previously announced, the new Soracom Cloud Camera Services (SoraCam) Status Dashboard is now available.

• Soracom Cloud Camera Services Status Dashboard: https://status.sora-cam.com/

Starting from today, incidents and maintenance notices related to SoraCam will be posted on the new dedicated SoraCam Status Dashboard.

If you have been using the RSS feed of this Status Dashboard to receive information related to SoraCam, please make sure to update your RSS feed for the new dedicated SoraCam Status Dashboard in order to continue receiving timely updates.

If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact the Soracom Support team.

Soracom maintains this Status Dashboard website where we post official information regarding Soracom service issues and system maintenance activities.

Up until now, information related to Soracom Cloud Camera Services (SoraCam) has also been posted on this dashboard. However, in order to better serve SoraCam customers, we will launch a dedicated SoraCam Status Dashboard which will focus on service issues, system maintenance, and other information pertaining to SoraCam.

All other information pertaining to Soracom services will continue to be posted on this Status Dashboard.

SoraCam Status Dashboard details

The SoraCam Status Dashboard will be accessible at https://status.sora-cam.com/ starting from March 25th, 2024.

What to do

If you are a SoraCam customer:

• Keep using this Status Dashboard for now.
• Starting on March 25th, use the new dedicated SoraCam Status Dashboard to get the latest SoraCam service status information.
• If you use this dashboard's RSS feed, add the new SoraCam Status Dashboard's RSS feed to keep receiving updates related to SoraCam. You can also optionally unsubscribe from this dashboard's RSS feed if you do not need updates related to other Soracom services.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact the Soracom Support team.

Today, we are excited to launch three new Soracom Onyx Connectivity Kits for Europe, featuring our popular Soracom Onyx LTE™ USB Modem combined with a Soracom Air planX3-EU SIM which includes 12 months of prepaid service.

The Soracom Onyx LTE™ USB Modem features a Cat4 module that provides global 4G/LTE connectivity, with fallback to 3G and 2G, in a single device that is optimised specifically for IoT and M2M applications. It enables cellular data connectivity for fixed and mobile IoT applications, such as smart agriculture, healthcare, asset tracking, and remote management.

With Soracom Onyx, you can easily develop new cellular-connected devices, retrofit previously unconnected devices, or even add cellular backhaul or failover connectivity to existing applications that use other technologies (such as Sigfox, Ethernet, and Wi-Fi).

The new connectivity kits are packaged with a Soracom Air planX3-EU SIM, providing 100MB, 500MB, or 1GB of monthly data, access to Soracom’s User Console for SIM management and monitoring, and several of Soracom’s powerful platform features. With the first 12 months of planX3-EU service included, these connectivity kits provide everything you need to get started with cellular IoT in a cost-effective way, without the hassle of checking SIM compatibility, coverage, or complicated pricing.

Soracom Onyx Connectivity Kits for Europe features

• 1x Soracom Onyx LTE™ USB Modem
• 1x Soracom Air planX3-EU SIM card (3-in-1), with the first 12 months of services included

Services included with each planX3-EU SIM:

• 100MB, 500MB, or 1GB monthly bundled data, depending on connectivity kit
• Soracom User Console and SIM management features (Event Handler, Billing Alerts, IMEI Lock, etc.)
• Soracom platform services, including data handling, remote device access, packet capture, and more (Soracom Beam, Funnel, Funk, Napter, Orbit, Peek, CHAP Authentication, and Custom DNS)

• Availability: Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom
• Coverage: Over 70 mobile networks across 37 European countries (please refer to our list of Supported Carriers for the latest coverage information)
• Promotional Price:
  • Soracom Onyx 100MB Europe: $99 or 90€ (excluding tax)
  • Soracom Onyx 500MB Europe: $109 or 99€ (excluding tax)
  • Soracom Onyx 1GB Europe: $119 or 109€ (excluding tax)

For more information or to purchase, please visit the product page.

We are pleased to announce the SmartFitPRO Standard + Analog Starter Kit, now available from the Soracom IoT Store.

SmartFitPRO Standard + Analog is an IoT gateway by Kyokko Electric Co., Ltd., equipped with 8 contact inputs and 4 analog inputs (4-20mA). It enables digitization of existing industrial equipment such as flow meters, control valves, and pressure gauges, which only have analog outputs.

SmartFitPRO Standard + Analog Starter Kit

• Availability: Japan only
• Supported countries and regions: Japan
• Price: 54,780 yen (tax included)
• Bundled with a 2,000 yen Soracom platform coupon (valid for 6 months, applicable towards Japan Coverage services only)
• Included Accessories: 8-channel contact input cable, analog input cable, Soracom IoT SIM for Japan (plan-D D-300MB, data communication only)

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

As previously announced, the Soracom Lagoon 2 service is scheduled to be discontinued on May 31, 2024. From June 1 onwards, only Lagoon 3 will be available. We kindly ask customers to migrate to Lagoon 3 before Lagoon 2 is discontinued in order to avoid unexpected interruption.

Migrating from Lagoon 2 to Lagoon 3

For customers still using Lagoon 2, most of your Lagoon 2 data was automatically copied to Lagoon 3 on April 17, 2023 at 03:00 (UTC), in order to assist with migration.

Please refer to the Lagoon: Versions & Migration documentation for additional details on data that was not included in the April 17 migration, and for instructions on how to manually migrate any changes you may have made in Lagoon 2 after this time.

If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact the Soracom support team.

We have improved the functionality of the IP Address Mapping feature in Virtual Private Gateways (VPG), making it easier to manage large numbers of entries efficiently.

Changes to the User Console

We have added a filter to the IP Address Map panel of the VPG configuration > Device LAN settings screen. You can now easily search for entries by IMSI or IP address.

Changes to the Soracom API

The VirtualPrivateGateway:listVirtualPrivateGatewayIpAddressMapEntries API now supports pagination with the following additional request parameters and response headers:

New Request Parameters

New Response Headers

We are pleased to announce the release of WebSocket support for the Soracom Beam Website Entry Point. WebSocket technology enables high efficiency, real-time communication between your devices and servers.

• We intend to upgrade the Soracom Beam Website Entry Point to this WebSocket-supported version for all customers in the future.
• At present, we do not have plan to incorporate WebSocket support into the existing Soracom Beam HTTP Entry Point or Unified Endpoint.

Website Entry Point (WebSocket-Supported Version) Pricing

Soracom Beam usage is calculated based on the number of requests made. For more details, please visit the Soracom Beam Pricing & Fee Schedule.

Please be aware that establishing a WebSocket connection between the device and the destination server with the WebSocket-supported Website Entry Point will count as 2 requests.

• Once the connection is established, sending and receiving messages will not count as additional requests.
• Data communication charges for Soracom Air / Soracom Arc will apply.

This feature is currently offered as a limited preview. If you are interested in accessing this feature, please reach out to our support team.

Soracom Endorse is an authentication service that issues secure tokens which can be used to verify that devices are genuinely connected to Soracom using an IoT SIM. Your server or application can then indepenently verify these tokens to determine if a device is allowed to access network resources.

With this update, you can now include SIM IDs in Soracom Endorse authentication tokens. This can greatly simplify the process of verifying tokens, especially for devices leveraging Subscription Containers or Soracom Arc, by allowing verification of a device using its corresponding SIM's SIM ID, rather than multiple different IMSIs.

For more details, please refer to the Configuring Soracom Endorse documentation.

We are excited to announce enhancements to the Soracom Support Bot, first launched on December 19, 2023. Based on customer feedback, we have made the following improvements:

• Upgraded AI model with more accurate responses
• Number of responses per ticket increased to 5 responses

Previously, the Soracom Support Bot was limited to providing only one response per support ticket. Now, customers can interact to rephrase their questions or provide further information, allowing the Soracom Support Bot to better understand the context and provide more appropriate answers.

Please note that Soracom support staff may terminate responses from the Soracom Support Bot if the dialogue is deemed inappropriate.

For more details about the Soracom Support Bot, please refer to the Creating a support request documentation.

The Soracom Support Bot is currently available as a public beta, free of charge. We welcome your feedback as we continue to improve its functionality.