Frequently Asked Questions

status site what are the ‘services’ as described on the status site? service type description data service gprs, 3g, 4g and 5g data services, including cat m1 and nb iot the ability for a mobile device to open data sessions and send/receive data to/from application servers data service is provided directly by our tier 1 operator partners sms service this is mainly the core sms service provided by our operator partners, covering mobile terminated sms for closed user group sims and all mobile originated sms however, any sms related issues that affect our sims, including issues relating to 3rd party sms providers (for example those used in connection with open user group sims), may also be reported and tracked on the status site voice service inbound and outbound voice calls and voicemail service provided by manx telecom there is also basic outbound and inbound voice call support on some of our other sim types increasingly, with the withdrawal of 2g and 3g services, this may include voice over lte (volte) services network registration the ability for mobile devices to successfully register on a new network multi network roaming sims will allow devices to register on any supported available network api services this covers anything relating to the availability of our api, or any specific service provided by our api see the api specification for more details sim insight sms services some sms services are provided directly via the sim insight platform and/or api sms can be sent from or received by our platform and we also provide an api based ‘push notification service’ by which customers can receive sms and delivery receipts on their own servers sim insight portal services this is the ability to access our web based sim insight portal and any of the services provided by sim insight, such as sim finder, sim focus, sim action etc network notices we occasionally receive notifications of issues affecting specific networks (e g vodafone, at\&t etc ) either generally or for specific geographical areas api update notification of any changes or new features relating to our api full details will be available in the updated api technical documentation, available under ‘resources’ on the sim insight portal sim insight portal feature release notification of any new features or changes to the sim insight portal status site feature release notification of any new features or changes to this status site service release notification of upgrades and changes to our services what do the ‘impact levels’ represent on the status site? each incident is judged on its own merits, but the descriptions below provide a loose guide to the criteria we consider when deciding an impact category incidents can change impact as they evolve for example, investigation may reveal that far fewer or far more sims/services are affected impact description none no operational impact expected we will also classify impact as ‘none’ where any expected impact is of such a short duration, less than a minute or two, that any disruption would be difficult to notice we will always review any api or portal transactions following these events to ensure that they are all completed successfully in addition, api updates and sim insight portal feature release notifications will always be classed as ‘none’ low only a few sims affected at any one time or a short duration of disruption, less than fifteen minutes longer disruptions might fall into this category if outside of our core hours of 06 00 to 22 00 utc network issues restricted to local geographical areas, unless high numbers of sims are affected sim insight portal is slower to respond than usual but is still operational sim insight portal or api unavailable for a short duration, less than 5 minutes longer duration sim insight portal problem only affecting non operational reporting e g history data medium noticeable disruption of service, potentially affecting up to a few hundred of sims, but perhaps restricted to individual countries/networks with options available for roaming onto alternative networks disruption would likely be less than 15 minutes sim insight portal or api service unavailable for no more than 15 minutes, possibly longer if outside core hours high any service outage on any sim type, data or sms or voice affecting more than about 500 sims for more than 15 minutes sim insight portal or api outages over 15 minutes severe delays in traffic data from the operators causing sim insight information to be compromised are all issues reported on the status site? in the most part, yes the only exceptions are problems that only relate to a specific customer and have no general implications such issues will be notified directly to the customer in question how do i get automated emails to keep me updated with the latest status updates? to receive automated emails you must set up one or more subscriptions and subscribers the pages are available under the subscriptions menu on the status site under subscribers , enter any email addresses you want the automated notices to be sent to you will assign the subscribers to subscriptions in the next step, so for now just add all the email addresses you require please take care when entering email addresses to ensure that notices are sent to the correct address next set up your subscriptions using the subscriptions page you can have as many subscriptions as you want, so you can send different notifications to different groups of recipients any existing subscriptions are listed on the page for you to review or modify to create a new subscription either click create or click clone to start a new one based on a previous entry for each subscription you must select the services you want to be informed about the impact level above which you will receive an alert the providers you want to know about the sim types the subscribers (email addresses) you want to receive the notification click create example you want to receive an automated email whenever there is a medium or high impact issue with your service you only use data on your sims and you use the o2 uk sims from telefonica and multinet voda sims from manx telecom you also want to know when there is an update to the sim insight portal when creating your subscription tick data service and select impact level medium (this will work for any impact level medium or above) you probably also need to know about network registration issues, so also tick network registration and again select medium also tick sim insight portal feature release and select none (this will ensure all release notifications are provided) under providers tick telefonica/o2 and manx telecom under sim types tick o2 uk and multinet voda under subscribers tick your email address click create how do i stop getting automated status emails or modify a subscription? existing subscriptions are listed on the subscriptions page for you to review, modify or delete to make a change, click the name of the subscription you want to modify and edit any details or selections to delete the subscription entirely use the delete button at the bottom of the page to add a new subscriber, you will first need to add the subscriber on the separate subscribers page, it will then be available to add under the subscription networks do you provide coverage maps? no most operators tend to have some sort of coverage map on their websites but their accuracy and reliability are questionable at best the operators tend to be optimistic when it comes to coverage as they don’t want to appear worse than their rivals they are all based on computer predictions rather than real data buildings, trees, weather, the number of users, cell maintenance, technology type (2g, 3g, 4g, 5g) and time of day can all affect coverage in a variable way if the maps indicate no coverage, then that would be a good indicator that you are going to struggle there are also crowd sourced coverage maps (such as unwired labs opencellid) that use real data, usually via apps on mobile phones however, they tend to be very misleading for areas where people don’t often go and also the data is still only valid for the time the measurements were made the only real way to do it is to visit the area with a survey tool and measure the performance for yourself but even that will only tell you the condition at that point in time do my sims work on 2g, 3g,4g, 5g, cat m1 or nb iot? all of our sims are capable of working on 2g and 3g, but not all networks support both standards many network operators are withdrawing support for 2g and/or 3g service check out the latest information under the 2g/3g network closures page on this status site sims supplied since 2016 will all support 4g and 5g (including cat m1 and nb iot), but for 5g, cat m1 and nb iot, coverage and roaming agreements are still being established so it’s best to contact support for the latest information in all cases, your device must also support the access technology and frequency bands required the sim alone is not sufficient to ensure compatibility what networks will the sims use? the networks used depend on several factors your sim type, the tariff applied, the country it is being used in, the roaming agreements in place and the access technology your device can support (2g,3g,4g,5g) for our multinetwork sims, the great majority of countries will have at least two networks available and often three or four the availability of networks is something that is quite fluid, and can also depend on the tariff you are using, so if you do need to know the specific networks it is best to contact support does my sim connect to the strongest network signal? the sim itself doesn’t connect to anything it simply provides the security information that allows the embedded modem within your device to attach to a network think of it as a sort of passport the key point here is that it is your device that decides which of the available networks to connect to if your device is configured to use automatic connection mode, then it will follow the standard gsm protocol for selecting a network the default behaviour is for it to try to connect to the network and cell that it last connected to the automatic mode takes no account of whether or not there is sufficient signal quality to establish a data connection provided the gsm signal is good enough it will stay with the current network it’s also worth noting that a cell with excellent signal strength may not allow a data session because of congestion to get the very best out of a multi network sim your device should be monitoring its communications and deciding to try an alternative network if it is struggling to establish a data connection, ensuring that network registration and data connection attempts are kept within the recommended six attempts per hour relying on devices that use automatic network connection is not ideal automatic mode will, by design, always attempt to connect to the network that had the last known good connection, regardless of whether that network is still the best option automatic mode also respects any entries in the forbidden plmn list stored on the sim card over time these entries can reduce the number of available networks programmatically using manual network selection will always override these restrictions, offering optimum multi network availability and performance sims what is the difference between the sim types? we provide sims from several different operators as each has specific functional features or geographic coverage the table below describes the key features of each type sim type operator description multinet kpn c kpn closed user group, multi network sims with global roaming available it supports data and sms services kpn are the national operator of the netherlands, the equivalent of bt in the uk they have roaming agreements with 500+ network operators in 200+ countries multinet kpn o kpn open user group version of the multinet kpn c 1 net manx telecom withdrawn from service although operated by manx telecom this sim uses an o2 imsi to provide single network uk coverage on the o2 network providing data, sms and voice service with a uk o2 telephone number this sim cannot roam outside of the uk withdrawn from service multinet voda manx telecom this sim is a multi network, voice capable sim with an eu roaming focus although operated by manx telecom, the roaming agreements are provided by vodafone netherlands they use an isle of man mobile telephone number, but there are options for changing to alternative number types the sims also support 2g/3g/4g/5g data and sms multinet m2m manx telecom this sim is a multi network sim with a global roaming focus although operated by manx telecom, the roaming agreements are provided by vodafone netherlands these are aimed at iot data applications working on 2g/3g/4g/5g, but also fully support voice and sms they use an isle of man mobile telephone number, but there are options for changing to alternative number types multinet manx manx telecom this sim is a multi network sim with global roaming available the roaming agreements are provided by manx telecom themselves and can in a few cases provide preferential rates to the multinet voda sim the sims are data, sms and voice capable using an isle of man mobile telephone number smart o2 voda manx telecom legacy sim type not available for new projects this is a ‘dual imsi’ sim that can automatically switch between the 1 net functionality and the multinet voda functionality it requires devices to support sim application toolkit since the withdrawal of the 1 net service, this sim is effectively equivalent to the multinet voda sim type o2 uk telefonica/o2 the o2 network in the uk is owned by telefonica this sim, provided by telefonica is a closed user group sim supporting data and sms only, using spanish telephone numbers on the uk o2 network there are ‘resilient’ tariffs available that support roaming onto other networks in the uk and eu, but traffic is steered towards o2 when available there are also special tariffs covering north and latin america the sim is primarily aimed at larger data bundle opportunities 100mb+ per month ee ee this sim supports both data and sms, using uk telephone numbers on its home uk ee network (non roaming) it can roam onto some eu networks it can also be used in the usa on t mobile sms operates in both closed and open user group modes simultaneously the sim is primarily aimed at larger data bundle opportunities 100mb+ per month multinet rog c rogers wireless rogers are a canadian based mobile network operator they have the only 2g capable network in canada the sims are therefore principally used for projects based in canada that use the rogers network and can also roam in the usa on t mobile and at\&t 3 global 3 ireland multi network sims that can also be configured for single network usage on '3' the sims support data and sms using irish +353 telephone numbers 3 ireland is part of the hutchison group with networks in over 200 countries although aimed at very high data use applications, it can also be used for lower data in territories where the hutchison roaming agreements improve on those offered by other sim types verizon verizon business single network sim for the usa operates on lte only (4/5g) providing data and sms services verizon is the largest mobile operator in the us verizon m1 verizon business cat m1 version of the verizon sim tele2 tele2 sweden multi network roaming sims, with open user group sms support as well as portal based sms functionality tele2 is the national operator in sweden and operates networks in several european countries we expect these sims will be primarily used for data roaming where tele2 have commercial or geographical advantages where your tariff allows, the sims can also support some voice functionality using +372 (estonia) telephone numbers, or long form swedish +46 numbers the suite of caburn sim types described below are based on a programmable euicc platform and as such can support one or more imsis from various operators those designated euicc, are designed to be imsi programmable in the field these sims are available on a range of form factors and can also be provided as virtual sims in the form of a qr code for installation on devices that support consumer e sims each combination of imsis provides a targeted global geographic footprint there are also options for brazil and turkey that have restrictions on permanent roaming the sims provide data and sms services sim type operator description caburn c caburn china telecom (hong kong) imsi excellent network coverage in the asia pacific region including china caburn to caburn telefonica (columbia) and o2 (uk) imsis the telefonica imsi provides an excellent global bootstrap, while the o2 imsi provides european and north american (mexico, usa and canada) as well as o2 in the uk caburn euicc m caburn melita (malta) telecom imsi uk, europe and north america caburn euicc mo caburn melita (malta) and o2 (uk) imsis uk, europe and north america, with additional commercial options provided by the o2 uk imsi caburn euicc tom caburn telefonica (columbia), o2 (uk) and melita (malta) imsis telefonica provides a wide global bootstrap as well as good commercials and network coverage in latin america, together with comprehensive european and north american coverage from the o2 and melita imsis, this configuration provides broad geographic coverage and resilience will my sims work in country x,y or z? there is a zones lookup page on the sim insight portal that will show you the countries covered for each sim type and which zones they will be covered under most groups allow global roaming, so even if your home zone does not cover the country you are interested in, the sim will still work provided it appears in at least one of the zones for pricing check out the tariff link at the end of the group on the sim insight live page this will show you the charges for usage in each zone example does my multinet kpn o sim work in algeria? my live group has a home zone of ‘europe kpn’ select multinet kpn o in the sim type on the zones lookup page tick the box for country lookup select algeria in the country list and click run the results show that algeria is included in the global extended kpn zone, the rest of the world kpn zone and the kpn optimum z6 zone the sim will work but the usage will not be included in your group’s data bundle because it won’t be in the home zone instead check the tariff to see what rates the global extended zone will be charged at what is the difference between kc and ko sims… open user group and closed user group? currently our kpn, telefonica o2 and rogers sims are classified as either open or closed user group sims are supplied in one of these two formats, so it is important to get the choice right when you order the oug/cug classification only affects the way the sim works with sms closed user group sims can only send sms to the management portal and receive sms from the management portal on the other hand, you cannot use the sim insight portal or api to send sms to devices with open user group sims, nor can the device send sms to the sim insight portal however, it can send sms to any public mobile and you can send sms to the device from your own or any mobile (assuming it supports sms messaging to the geographic number of the target sim) or from on line sms services some sim types allow both modes of operation simultaneously, such as ee, tele2 and 3 global how do i activate a sim? use sim action on the sim insight portal or the set group api command to set the appropriate live group this will configure everything required to activate your sim can i make my sims auto activate into a live group when they get used? yes, you can set an auto activation group for any sims currently in a pending group these sim types typically have a small test allowance available so that the sims can be tested in the factory without them moving into a chargeable live group when the test allowance is exceeded, we will check whether an auto activation group has been set if it has, then the sim will be automatically moved to the specified live group use sim action on the sim insight portal to assign the auto activation group of your choice this will configure everything required to activate your sim when the test allowance is exceeded do i need to set the status of my sims after i set the group? no the action of setting the appropriate group, automatically sets the correct status what is the difference between deactivating, suspending and closing a sim? de activating a sim in a live group will stop it operating but you will still be charged the monthly fee the monthly charge will still be incurred because the bundle allowance for that sim remains valid and is available to the rest of the group deactivating is recommended for short term withdrawal of service for up to a few weeks if the device is not going to be used for an extended period of several weeks or months, then suspending the sim becomes the best option suspending involves transferring the sim into a suspended group this will typically stop the monthly charges for the sim, but depending on your tariff there may be a small retention fee moving the sim into the suspended group automatically sets the status to deactivated we will generally set a limit on the number of sims that can be held in a suspended group and reserve the right to limit the number of suspensions allowed in any one month normally a sim cannot be reactivated within 7 days of a suspension if a sim is never going to reused then closure is the best option, however we would obviously prefer you to reuse sims if there is a chance the service/sim may be reactivated within a year, then we would recommend suspending the sim as described above closing a sim is just a change of status and can be done from the sim insight portal sim action page the group is irrelevant once a sim is closed it will not be able to do any traffic and it doesn’t incur any monthly fee closing a sim is potentially, and often, irreversible because the numbers may be allocated to new devices or the sim is remotely terminated if you do want us to try to re open a closed sim, this may incur a charge, provided the process is successful can you ‘refresh/purge’ a sim? some iot service providers refer to ‘refreshing or purging a sim’ there is in fact nothing on a sim to refresh or purge in most cases they are referring to the cancel location process that is part of normal gsm operation if one of your mobile devices is not reporting it may be worth issuing a ‘cancel location’ request however, please read the following information and the warning below before proceeding when a mobile device registers on a cell on a network, information about the current location is stored in several network elements such as the home location register (hlr), visitor location register (vlr), mobile switching centre (msc) and the serving gprs support node (sgsn) or lte equivalents as the device moves from cell to cell, location area to location area or from one network to another this information is being updated the idea being that the network knows where your device is there might be rare occasions when this information gets corrupted or perhaps is not deleted when it should be the ‘cancel location’ sends out a request to the network elements on which your device is currently registered in order to delete any information relating to your sim in theory this should force your device to issue a ‘location update’ when it next tries to interact with the network this refreshes the information throughout the network it does not do anything to the sim itself please note however, that many devices will not issue a location update unless the device is power cycled in fact, power cycling will often cause a location update regardless of whether a cancel location has been sent for this reason, we always strongly recommend that devices should periodically power cycle and that you ensure devices can be power cycled remotely via sms (note, never schedule reboots for a specific time, as this causes all devices to reboot simultaneously, causing excess load on the networks ) if your device does not respond to a cancel location with a location update and it does not periodically power cycle, then issuing a cancel location request may have the effect of permanently excluding your device from network services until manual intervention is possible you cannot rely on sending an sms to power cycle your device because following a cancel location; the network will probably be unable to locate your device to deliver the sms we recommend you test how your device reacts to the cancel location using a convenient test unit before applying to live units can you provide a location for my sim? if you are using manx telecom, tele2, caburn, 3 global or most multinet kpn sims, we are often able to find out the identification details of the cell that a sim is currently using, or last used in this case we can get a very approximate position by looking up the position of the cell and knowing the area that the cell covers this is a very basic location based service (lbs) the information is available on request either from the sim focus page on the sim insight portal or via api the api also provides an extension to this service and is available for any sim type but relies on your application being able to provide the cell details all cellular device modems are able to ‘see’ the details of the nearest available cells, from any network, and the signal strengths from those cells if you can use your device application to retrieve the details for three or four of the nearest cells, the information can be submitted to our lbs service via an api we will return triangulated latitude and longitude and an accuracy radius in built up areas this can often be within a few hundred meters clearly this doesn’t have the accuracy of gps but in the absence of gps and with the increasing prevalence of gps blockers, it can provide a very useful backup facility the lbs service is chargeable in some cases please contact sales for details can i re open a closed sim? closing a sim is potentially, and often, irreversible because the numbers may be allocated to new devices, or the sim may have been terminated remotely if you do want us to try to re open a closed sim, this is a chargeable service, although we only charge if the process is successful we have to apply to our providers to check whether the numbers have been re used and to re provision the devices as a result it can take up to 24 hours, longer over weekends, to complete the process device configuration what apn should i use? what is it used for? do i need a username, password, mcc or mnc? the apn is the access point name and it is only used in conjunction with data traffic it is basically an address that tells the network you are using who your sim supplier is so it can send the data to the right operator it's difficult to define here the correct apn for your sims because it depends on the sim type and also some customers will have special apns for their specific circumstances it's best to contact support to ensure you have the correct apn it is worth mentioning that sometimes you can establish a successful data session without the correct apn because some networks use a different identifier from the sim card to work out how to route your data unfortunately, this cannot be relied upon, so it is important you make sure you have configured the correct one often devices will guess the apn based on the network you are connected to using commonly available public apns these will not work with our sims so you must ensure any form of automatic apn selection is disabled and try to ensure any alternative communication profiles with incorrect apns are deleted from your device devices often ask for a username and password for the apn none of our sims require username or password they can either be left blank or dummy details inserted sometimes devices, notably android devices, want to associate the apn with the mcc (mobile country code) and mnc (mobile network code) of the sim the details for each of our sim types are listed below sim type mcc mnc 1 net 234 10 multinet voda 204 04 multinet m2m 204 04 multinet manx 234 58 multinet kpn c 204 08 multinet kpn o 204 08 o2 uk 214 07 multinet rog c 302 72 ee 234 30 3 global 272 02 verizon 311 480/270 verizon m1 311 480/270 tele2 sweden 240 07 tele2 estonia 248 03 caburn m 278 77 caburn o 234 10 caburn c 454 31 caburn t 732 123 can you provide fixed ip addresses for the sims? all our sims use ipv4 addressing and public fixed ip addresses are in extremely short supply most providers are not prepared to offer fixed public ip addresses as it is generally not a scalable solution kpn offer the possibility of a fixed public ip address for very small scale deployments or testing purposes remember that having a publicly addressable sim, opens up significant security risks and inbound traffic cannot be regulated the option we therefore recommend for fixed ip requirements is to provide the sims in a private ip environment using an ipsec vpn connection to your data centre within the private ip space we can then provide virtually unlimited fixed ip addresses for the sims if you would like to discuss implementing a vpn please contact support it is also worth considering whether you really need fixed ip often this arises when a wired network architecture is ‘converted’ into a mobile solution but mobile networks are fundamentally different you cannot initiate a data session from the server side in a mobile network the session must be started by the mobile device under these circumstances, it’s possible for the device to establish the data connection and then poll the server to see if any requirements are outstanding fault finding why is my sim not working? in all likelihood it’s not the sim that is the problem the sim is a relatively robust device with very well tested and simple embedded code it’s far more likely to be a network issue or a device issue, both of which are enormously more complex than the sim if it’s a large number of devices that are not working then it’s probable there is a general network issue check this status site to see if there are any known current issues that might be affecting your sim type if there are then you can follow the progress of the investigation on the status information page if all seems well, then it’s also worth checking your own server infrastructure to ensure the problem isn’t at your end if all is well with your servers, then you will have to contact our support team so we can start to investigate the issue if it is just an isolated device that isn’t working there are a number of steps you can take that will often resolve the problem check that the sim card has not been deactivated, closed or suspended you can find this information on the sim insight portal under sim finder or sim focus check that your device is still in a country that is covered by the group your sim is in for example an ee sim often won’t work outside of the uk power cycle the device this must also fully power cycle the internal modem in your device this forces your modem to re attach to the network check that roaming is enabled on your device nearly all of our sims (except ee in the uk and verizon) require roaming to be able to connect to a network try to send an sms to the device if this is not delivered it strongly suggests that the device is currently off, or not on a network if the problem is only related to achieving a successful data session, then double check that the apn is set up correctly don’t assume that because it works sometimes, that the apn is correct some networks don’t use the apn to direct data traffic, whilst others do if your device doesn’t seem to be on a network, it could be in an area with poor coverage or in a restricted radio area such as an underground car park it’s often worth being patient to see if the device ‘reappears’ if the device appears to be on a network but still isn’t managing a data session, it could be that the signal strength is not sufficient for data communications or that cell congestion is preventing a connection we always recommend having an sms backup capability as sms requires far lower signal requirements to be successful and doesn’t suffer from congestion issues to get the very best performance from your multi network sim we recommend that your device is proactive in switching between networks if your device is unable to contact your servers, it should try an alternative network relying on the automatic network connection mode on your modem, won’t achieve this as it focusses on the available gsm signal rather than the data performance note that network operators require devices to restrict registration attempts to a maximum of six per hour consider sending a cancel location that should force your device do a ‘location update’ that refreshes the information about your sim throughout the network however, please read the warnings associate with this action if all else has failed, the most likely problem is that there simply isn’t network coverage or that you have a device failure/misconfiguration why is my data delayed? there is nowhere in the network where your data is buffered, stored or delayed if the data is sent from your device then it will arrive at its destination within about a second, or else it won’t arrive at all if you are experiencing apparent delays in data delivery, for example data generated at 10am doesn’t get registered by your application until say 1pm, then there are only two places the data can be getting delayed the first and most likely is in your mobile device often when a device is unable to get a network connection due to insufficient signal strength, high error rates or data congestion, it will buffer up your data and send it when a connection becomes available alternatively, there could be some buffering or storage within your own server infrastructure in most cases it’s simply a case of waiting until your device regains a good signal charging and usage monitoring can i see my traffic usage and charges? yes, the usage and charges for your entire sim estate is summarised on the insight live page this provides a summary of all your sim types and their groups how many sims are live, how much traffic they are using and what the projected costs will be for the month the information is updated at least once per day, so as the month progresses you can see whether there are any issues to be managed sim warnings and cut offs are indicated immediately we show areas of interest with colour highlights so you can quickly pick out problems red indicates sims that have reached their cut off limit yellow denotes warnings where sims have reached a warning level or a group charge has exceeded a level chosen by you by setting the warning levels appropriately, you can keep the insight live page free of warnings, until you really need to see an issue can i get alerts to warn of unexpected usage? yes you can choose to receive notifications by email or api for each of the following circumstances on a group by group basis an individual sim usage warning an individual sim cut off level forecast out of bundle data charges forecast out of bundle sms charges forecast out of bundle voice charges out of zone charges to date forecast total monthly charge for a group to access the email and api alert configuration information, you must have the administrator role click on the group name on the insight live page there are some help buttons to explain the various choices where do i add or change the email addresses that i want alerts sending to? currently this can only be done by the support team send an email to caburnsupport\@csl group com, or call the support number and we will be happy to help what does ‘manx nominal balance’ mean? this only applies to manx telecom sims smart o2 voda, multinet voda, multinet manx and multinet m2m the most important thing to realise is that the nominal balance is not what you will be charged it is simply a mechanism that manx telecom use to monitor how much a sim is being used and therefore work out when to send the warning emails and to cut off the sims if usage gets too high it is based on your nominal tariff which is usually set to 10p/min voice, 10p per text and £1 00/mb (keeps the maths easy) for example your sim has used 2mb of data, 10 sms and 5 minutes voice your nominal balance will be 2×£1 + 10×10p + 5×10p = £3 50 if you need the nominal tariff changing to better reflect the balance between the services you use, we can set it to whatever levels you require you might for example want data to be ‘charged’ at a higher rate so that excessive data usage will cut off your sim more quickly than heavy sms usage this is why the warning and cut off levels for manx sims are specified in £s they are compared against your nominal balance for each sim what you are actually charged is based on your group tariff (which you can see by clicking the link at the end of each group on the insight live page) an individual sim doesn’t really have a cost of its own because the usage of a single sim is aggregated with the usage of all the other sims in the same group what levels should i set my warnings and cut off limits at? the warning and cut off levels are intended to protect you from individual sims using much higher levels of traffic than you anticipated and therefore from unexpectedly high bills at the end of the month your traffic usage is aggregated across each group, so it is natural and expected that some sims will do significantly more traffic than others, but this won’t be a problem because the lower usage sims will contribute their allowance to the higher usage sims the usage information on the portal is updated at least once a day, so you can see the projected monthly bill throughout the month therefore it is important to realise that the warning and cut off levels should be about identifying truly extraordinary devices, not just those at the expected higher usage end of the scale; for example devices where a configuration error or hardware fault has caused them to start reporting continuously or perhaps a sim that has been removed from its intended device and is being used for illicit purposes the first thing to consider when setting the levels is that you do not want very many sims to be reaching the levels as soon as you have more than five or ten emails a month, you will start to ignore them let’s use an example of a group with a 5mb/sim/month allowance some sims will do zero traffic, but some very high usage sims might do 10mb/month therefore the warning level should be set above the 10mb/month and the cut off level further above that as a final protection, so perhaps 15mb and 25mb some applications demand that the sims are not cut off under any circumstances, that is an individual decision for your business in that case you could set the cut off level as high as you need, perhaps 500mb please note that you will be liable for any excess traffic charges that are incurred the portal provides a useful chart for helping to visualise how much data sims use in each group available under the reporting menu, data distribution chart will reveal what the normal range of usage values are and therefore also where the usage might be considered extreme this may help you to decide the most appropriate levels at which to set your warnings and cut offs can i change the warning and cut off levels for individual sims? each group has a default warning level and cut off level when sims are moved into a group for the first time, they will be automatically assigned these default levels you can see and change the current default levels by clicking on the group name on the insight live page on the portal to change the default levels for a group, edit the values shown you can also choose whether or not emails and api notifications are sent when levels are reached you then have the option to individually configure the levels for individual sims as described below for kpn, rogers, ee, telefonica/o2, verizon, tele2, caburn and 3 global sims, the levels are defined in megabytes of data (mb) and can be selected from a defined set of discrete levels to change the levels, use the sim action page on the portal with manx telecom sims, the levels are specified as a nominal balance in pounds and pence and you can enter any value again, use the sim action page on the portal to make these changes what happens when a sim reaches its cut off level? can it be re activated? as implied, once a sim reaches its cut off level, the sim will stop working for any traffic it remains in its current group, and therefore will continue to incur its monthly charge and will continue to contribute to the group traffic allowance once you have investigated the reason for the unexpected traffic usage, it is possible to re activate the sim for all sim types except manx telecom sims, use the sim action page on the portal to change the status to activated this will bring the device back into service, but it will cut off again when the next discrete cut off level is reached for future months the original cut off limit will remain alternatively, use the sim action page to increase the individual cut off level for the sim or move the sim to a group that has a higher default cut off level this again will immediately bring the device back into service, but of course the new increased limit will be there to protect you in this latter case, the new limit will persist for future months unless you change it again for manx telecom sims, levels are set on the basis of the nominal balance and nominal tariff the option exists to add some nominal credit, using sim action this has the effect of lowering the current balance back below the cut off level and therefore brings the sim back into service in this case the limit itself has not changed and therefore the effect of adding nominal credit only lasts for the current month alternatively, increase the cut off level the sim returns to operation and this time the new level will persist for future months what is the home zone and what are out of zone (ooz) charges? each group has a home zone assigned to it the home zone is a geographical zone of countries in which the sims in that group are typically intended to operate the traffic allowances associated with a group only apply to traffic used in the home zone any traffic usage outside of the home zone is charged immediately, irrespective of any data allowance, at the rates defined in the group tariff these charges are known as out of zone charges or ooz they are highlighted in red for each group at the end of the insight live page to check the ooz rates for usage in a particular zone, click on the tariff details link for the appropriate group on the insight live page of the portal what are out of bundle (oob) charges? each sim group has set of traffic allowances for data, voice and sms used in the home zone these allowances are aggregated for all the sims in the group for example, if your group has a data allowance of 2mb and it contains 500 sims then the group as a whole has an aggregated data allowance of 2×500=1000mb for the calendar month once the total data usage for the month exceeds the 1000mb, the excess data is out of bundle and will incur oob charges as defined in the group tariff to check the oob rates for usage in a particular zone, click on the tariff details link for the appropriate group on the insight live page of the portal what is the minimum billing unit for data? this is the smallest unit of data that is recorded for each data session if for example the minimum billing unit is 1kbyte and your session uses 250 bytes, the session will be recorded as using 1kbyte if 3 5kbytes are used the session is rounded up to 4kbytes the actual value depends on the zone in which the sim is being used and is really down to the minimum units our suppliers are charged by the networks the most commonly used countries tend to be 1kb minimum whereas more rarely used countries are often 10kb billing this can make a very substantial difference to your effective data usage it is worth considering how you configure your application to reduce the effects of minimum billing units it costs nothing to keep a data session open; it only costs when you are actually sending data therefore keeping sessions open for as long as possible will minimise the effects of billing units and is generally good practice due to the decreased signalling load on the network on the other hand, opening and closing sessions with small amounts of data in each session will make the effects of the minimum billing unit much worse to check the minimum billing unit for usage in a particular zone, click on the tariff details link for the appropriate group on the insight live page of the portal