Quick Reference
Data Usage & Billing Calculations
Calculating Data Usage
When a cellular-enabled device sends or receives data over a cellular network, data is transferred using packets, similar to protocols such as TCP or HTTP. These packets include headers that contain source, destination, and other information necessary to route the data through the cellular network.
In the case of communications via Soracom, each packet uses Ethernet, IP, UDP, and GTP headers as it travels through a cellular network. This creates a total header size of 50 to 54 bytes. These additional bytes are included in a SIM's data usage, as detailed in the subscriptions below.
Soracom converts units using 1,024 bytes = 1 kilobyte, 1,024 kilobytes = 1 megabyte, etc.
Both uplink packets and downlink packets include Ethernet, IP, UDP, and GTP headers, which are counted toward the SIM's data usage and are subject to data usage charges, as shown below:
Calculating Billable Data Usage
The amount of data that is billed for is then calculated based on the minimum billing unit of the country where the data was used. Raw data usage is rounded up to the nearest increment of the minimum billing unit. This rounding occurs for each SIM card individually and not for total usage across all SIM cards on your account.
For example, the minimum billing unit for the United States for plan01s IoT SIM cards is 100 kilobytes. If over the course of the month one plan01s IoT SIM card uses 127 kilobytes of data, it will be billed for 200 kilobytes.
Minimum billing units for each country can be found on the Supported Carriers page.
Calculating Data Charges
After determining billable data usage, Soracom charges customers for data based on the plan of their SIM card, whether that SIM card is Pay-As-You-Go or bundled, and the country in which the data usage occurred.
Overage prices for bundled data plans can be found in the Pricing and Fee Schedule.
Data prices for each country for Pay-As-You-Go plans can be found on the Supported Carriers page.