Dear Telraam team and those reading along,
when reading about the exiting new Telraam S2, some question came up I couldn’t answer myself:
Your webshop lists the prices for a Telraam S2 device including a 12-month-subscription for accessing its data. Could you elaborate what this means - will I loose access to the APIs and overviews of the networks and even my own devices after a certain amount of time? What costs (incl. data subscription) would really occur for - let’s say a local neighbourhood initiative or municipality - if several S2s should come into regular use?
Telraam data is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0, although your “default position is to share data with private individuals, companies and authorities freely for whatever purpose”. How can a local initiative ensure that its measurement data can actually be used, even if further processing is unclear? Is it ensured that the local authorities are allowed to use the data for e.g. public interest tech? Some cities and public institutions cooperate with service providers, external parties, etc., which would not be possible with a regular interpretation of the NC license - also any royalties to Telraam and neighbors can not be specified in advance.
Thank you for any answers and I apologize for any inconvenience caused.
If you want to get a proper answer, why not pop along to our Hangout this evening and I’m sure we’d love to go over these with you.
However, in brief, I will answer here as well:
This is not quite correct. The license is not to access the data, but to access the Network dashboard, and to pay for the data connectivity of the Internet of Things device (each S2 device is connected to a mobile data network to connect to servers to avoid using wifi). The data itself is freely available.
Private individuals do not need the dashboard and reporting, and we do not charge the data connection costs - but subsidise this from the professional connections we are also supporting. We therefore offer an ‘all-in’ cost for these users so the device has no additional costs while it is theirs alone.
No! The data gathered is, and continues to be, Open Data. You will continue to be able to access your data, and other data, using the website or API whether you are a paying customer or not.
What could be different, is that customers who are paying for a network will also have access to an advanced API that will have the 15 minute bins of data (not yet released, coming soon) for S2 devices. However, even without this you will have access to the current, and free, API with 1 hour data bins
Our prices are transparent and on the S2 page. If all the devices are operated by individual residents, then each of their access is free. If, on the other hand, the local municipality decided to create a network to manage (and grow) the number of devices, there is a cost of €25 per month, per device, for the access to the Network Dashboard, with all the additional reporting benefits as well AND the data connectivity.
Hopefully this is answered above. A local group could collect data from several users to create reports, but in this case it is their responsibility to create reports and dashboards from the API, or they can upgrade to use our systems instead.
You are not wrong. It is sometimes a grey line.
If a local authority or commercial business wants to access some of the existing data from a few local devices that are owned and operated by private individuals, it still fits our goals of ensuring those Telraam device owners’ are participating in local mobility planning. However, this would likely be ad-hoc and for a few devices.
If these same authorities or businesses need a robust, long-term solution and API access for a larger number of devices and locations, then they would need to coordinate with us to ensure we supported each other, and in this case we would look for them to contribute in some way - either by operating a network, or simply paying for the data access.
There is a difference between a local transport officer using Telraam data for a report on a traffic intervention, and someone like Google accessing all traffic data to add to their Maps feature, for example.
Does this answer the question? Are there things I’ve not considered? I’m more than happy to chat further as this is a very interesting area as we gather more and more data from different locations, and we find out about different ways the S2 is being used.