With the industry’s first Message-based pricing model, Octave brings simplicity and predictability, and control to cellular IoT pricing. This topic provides full details on the Octave pricing model.

Overview

Octave pricing is metered on a simple model with two components:

1. a solution fee that includes full access to the Sierra Wireless Global Wireless Network, development tools, and cloud APIs.
2. a usage fee based on the number of Messages sent and received. A Message is a payload with up to 20 datapoints.

Your overall monthly fee is determined by the number of communicating devices on your platform, the total number of Messages transmitted, and the region where those devices are located. The table below shows the pricing structure.

The following table shows the fees for file transfers:

You can view and manage your account billing by accessing the Billing screen in Octave.

Example

You want to set up a connected water monitoring deployment with 500 solar powered telemetry systems. Let’s figure out what your monthly budget should look like.

You set up your Octave edge device to monitor three Datapoints:

• Groundwater level
• Acidity
• Battery level

You want to log these Datapoints every hour but don’t need real-time updates - you’re happy to get the data every 6 hours. With Octave, that will generate 4 Messages per day x 30 days x 500 devices = 60,000 Messages per month.

Your deployment is in Region A, so your rate is $1 monthly per connected device plus $1 for every 1000 Messages. This works out to a monthly total of $560 per month, or $1.12 per telemetry system.

Pricing Details

Solution Fee

The monthly solution fee for your deployment covers:

• Secure network connectivity in over 160 countries via the Sierra Wireless Global Wireless Network (may not be included in specific quotations).
• Device and connectivity management for monitoring and configuring your devices​.
• Ongoing security patches, including two over-the-air software updates for your Octave edge devices per year.
• Use of Octave APIs and graphical user interface.

The billing rules are as follows:

• The solution fee is calculated by the number of communicating devices in each month - measured by the unique device ID. Any device which connects and is seen online on the platform at any point during a month will generate a solution fee charge for that month. There is no prorating of the solution fee.
• Devices can be removed or added at any time.
• If a registered device doesn't communicate for 12 consecutive months, its subscription will be automatically revoked.

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Example

On March 1, you have 1200 devices registered on Octave, communicating on a daily basis. On March 15 you add 300 devices to your fleet. Your solution fee for March will be calculated on 1500 devices.

Messages and Datapoints

An Octave Message consists of one or more Events, transmitted from device to cloud or vice versa. Messages are metered by the number of Datapoints they contain. A Datapoint is a single data value (e.g., temperature reading) which can be represented as a "key" : "value" pair where the value is a JavaScript primitive data type (e.g., number, boolean, or string up to 25 characters). JSON objects and arrays are metered by the number of Datapoints contained in those objects.

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Note

Additional metadata (e.g., location, time) sent by Octave is not counted as a Datapoint.

Event Storage Capacity

Octave is designed as a conduit for customers to transfer their data (e.g., to send data to a final system of records such as a database or data repository). Since Octave itself is not meant to be a system of records or data storage solution for customer data, Octave provides a default storage of 1000 Events per Stream which Octave will store for one month.

Example Events and Messages

Event with 2 Datapoints
This event has 2 datapoints and would be sent as one message

{
    "light": 537, 
    "temperature": "29.3"
}

Datapoints in nested objects and arrays
Values in nested objects and arrays are counted as Datapoints. The following Event has 4 Datapoints.

{
    "lightvalues": [537, 532], 
    "tempvalues": [29.3, 30.1]
}

Strings
Strings are measured as 1 Datapoint per 25 characters, rounded up. For example, a string of up to 25 characters is one Datapoint, a string of up to 50 characters is 2 Datapoints, and so on. The below Message has 3 Datapoints in total.

{
    "shortstring": "i am one datapoint", 
    "longstring": "this string has two datapoints"
}

Large Events
Events can exceed 20 Datapoints - in this case they are metered as multiple Messages. The number of Messages needed to transmit an event is the total number of datapoints divided by 20, rounded up. For example, the below Event would be counted as 2 messages.

{
  "elems": {
    "virtual": {
      "report": {
        "ten_datapoints": [0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9],
        "ten_more_datapoints": [10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19],
        "another_datapoint": "I am the 21st datapoint"
      }
    }
  },
  "generatedDate": 1592283014052
}

Event Elements and Metadata
In Octave, Event data is augmented by metadata which is not counted towards the Datapoint total. Only the values of elems are counted. The below Event has 2 Datapoints.

{
  "creationDate": 1592283014996,
  "creatorId": "i000000000000000000000001",
  "elems": {
    "virtual": {
      "report": {
        "light": 537, // first datapoint
        "temperature": "29.3" // second datapoint
      }
    }
  },
  "generatedDate": 1592283014052,
  "hash": null,
  "id": "e5ee84f865dc8dd427148cc2e",
  "lastEditDate": 1592283014996,
  "lastEditorId": "i000000000000000000000001",
  "location": null,
  "metadata": {
  },
  "path": "/test_1/devices/mangohred_test1/report",
  "streamId": "s5e9641aeb20f2739ae2f7d77",
  "tags": {
  }
}

Aggregating Events
Octave automatically aggregates events together at the edge before transmitting to the cloud. By using Store and Forward, you can combine different events into the same message. For example, the two events below would together count as 12 Datapoints, so 1 message.

// one Event with 10 datapoints
{
    "elems": {
        "virtual": {
            "report": {
                "ten_datapoints": [0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]
            }
        }
    },
    "generatedDate": 1592283016052
}

// one Event with 2 datapoints
{
    "elems": {
        "virtual": {
            "report": {
                "aboolean": true,
                "anumber":12
            }
        }
    },
    "generatedDate": 1592283016052
}

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Optimizing your data usage

To optimize your data usage and minimize your Message count, you should make use of Octave's Store and Forward to bundle events into a single Message. You should also set up the device to minimize messages.

Service Options

You can enable single sign-on (SSO) so that Octave users can log in to all Sierra Wireless cloud services via their own company credentials. The cost for SSO with Sierra Wireless services: $199 / Month.

Regions

All your Octave devices are automatically assigned to one of four pricing regions, depending on where they are in the given monthly billing cycle. Devices are not locked to a specific region - they can move from one to another without any change to the subscription. At the end of each month, all charges for your entire global deployment are aggregated on a single invoice.

For a complete listing of countries and regions, please take a look at our pricing tool.

Devices which move from one region to another in a given billing period will have the solution fee billed to the higher-cost region. Messages will be billed according to where they are sent/received.

Developer Mode

When you first start to prototype your solution with Octave, you will want a continuous link between device and cloud to make frequent updates and configuration changes. This will result in a high number of messages. Developer Mode is designed to simplify the development process without incurring excessive costs to the user.

Devices in Developer Mode are automatically synchronized with the cloud, so all settings are continually updated. In addition, devices in Developer Mode can transmit up to 20 thousand messages at a discounted flat rate. Developer Mode can be enabled on any device at any time - it’s not a separate data plan.

Messages sent past the 20K threshold are charged normally. There is a limit of 20 developer mode devices per account at any one time.

Overages in Developer Mode are pooled across the fleet of devices which are in Developer Mode: overages will be charged if the average number of messages is above 20K messages per device in Developer Mode. This is not pooled with devices which are not in Developer Mode.

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Example

In March, you have three active devices on Octave and two are enabled in Developer Mode. One device in Developer Mode has sent 10k messages and the second one in Developer Mode 40k messages.

The cumulative count of messages sent by devices in Developer Mode in the month is 50k for a pool of messages at discounted rate of 40k (2 devices * 20k per device) therefore you will be charged for 10k messages in overages.

Messages sent by the third device which has not been enabled in Developer Mode are not taken in account in the computation of overages for those enabled in Developer Mode.

File Transfer Pricing

This section provides pricing details for sending files to your asset.

File Transfer Fee:

• This fee covers the costs for any initiated file transfer from the Octave cloud to the device. A file transfer is initiated when a file download operation is triggered on the Octave cloud and it is confirmed that the device is in reach to start transferring data.
• This File Transfer Fee covers the cost for file data up to 1 MB: for files smaller than 1 MB no extra File Data Fee will be applied. The included 1 MB only applies to the one device for which the File Transfer Fee is accounted for, there is no pooling of the 1 MB.

File Data Fee:

• This fee covers the additional costs of file data for files larger than 1 MB
• When the file is successfully downloaded to the device, the File Data Fee is calculated for the portion of the file size that exceeds 1 MB, rounded up to the closest 0.1 MB.
• When the file is partially downloaded to the device, the File Data Fee is calculated for the portion of the transferred data that exceeds 1 MB, rounded up to the closest 0.1 MB.

The file data fees for each region are shown above in the Overview section.

Firmware Over-the-Air Updates (FOTA)

Your Octave account is permitted two firmware over-the-air updates per year per device. These include necessary “push” updates, such as security patches, initiated by Sierra Wireless. You can also perform an unlimited number of updates to your device locally (i.e., by directly connecting a laptop directly to your device) via the command line (see the device-specific tutorials in the Upgrade your Device topics in the table of contents).

Firmware refers to the software on the Octave edge device, including modem-level firmware, operating system, Octave services, and customer applications built on the Legato framework. Firmware excludes any data orchestration elements created by the customer such as Resources, Observations, and Edge Actions. These can be updated dynamically without consuming a FOTA update.

Customers wishing to execute additional FOTA updates can do so at the same rate than file transfer (see table above)

Blueprints

Blueprints, which are versioned configuration templates that can be applied to devices, are not billed for (i.e., they are free to send to devices).

Monitoring Usage

You can monitor the usage of the devices in your deployment using Octave's Usage screen. For more information see Monitoring Usage.