This topic describes the billing method and associated billing items of physical connections. Both exclusive physical connections and shared physical connections involve Alibaba Cloud fees and third-party service provider fees. Exclusive physical connections use dedicated ports, and shared physical connections use shared ports.

Billing items of exclusive physical connections

The following figure and table show the billing items of exclusive physical connections.

Note
  • By default, in the regions within China, you cannot use your current account to create VBRs for other accounts. The physical connection owner and the physical connection user must belong to the same enterprise. If you require special permissions, you can submit a ticket. The enterprise that owns the A26 license for telecommunication infrastructure service granted by China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) can submit a ticket to create VBRs for other accounts.
  • By default, in regions outside China, you cannot use your current account to create VBRs for other accounts. If you require special permissions, you can submit a ticket.
Charged by Billing item Description Payment method
Third-party service provider

Optical fiber installation fee

Indoor cable rental fee

 A leased line rental fee is charged by the leased line provider. You must contact the provider yourself to obtain a price quote for end-to-end resources. A cable connection fee and an indoor cable rental fee may be charged by the provider of the data center where the access point is located.

One-time charge.
Alibaba Cloud Initial installation fee An initial installation fee is charged for port installation. A one-time charge of USD 1,500.
Resource occupation fee A resource occupation fee is charged based on the specification of the port. Billed on a monthly basis.
Outbound network traffic fee An outbound network traffic fee is charged for the network traffic from the Alibaba Cloud data center to the on-premises data center.

Fees are calculated on an hourly basis. Bills are generated on an hourly basis. A billing period less than an hour is calculated as an hour.

Billed based on data usage. Unit price: USD 0.015/GB.
Note No outbound network traffic fee is charged until December 1, 2020.
Note All data centers where Alibaba Cloud access points are located are operated by telecom operators or third-party data center providers except for the access points in the China (Zhangjiakou) region and the Hangzhou-Yuhang-A access point. These data center providers may require you to pay extra fees, for example, an indoor cable rental fee. The provider of the on-premises data center may also charge you extra fees.

The following table lists different resource occupation fees incurred by different port specifications.

Table 1. Resource occupation fee
Billing item Port specification Subscription (USD/month)
Resource occupation fee (mainland China) 1 GB or less 85
10 GB 720
40 GB 2,450
100 GB 5,200
Resource occupation fee (outside China) 1 GB or less 210
10 GB 1,600
40 GB 5,500
100 GB 11,700

Billing items of shared physical connections

The following figure and table show the billing items of shared physical connections.

Charged by Billing item Description Payment method
Third-party service provider

Optical fiber installation fee

Indoor cable rental fee

 A leased line rental fee is charged by the leased line provider. This provider is also an Alibaba Cloud partner. You must contact the provider yourself to obtain a price quote.

One-time charge.
Alibaba Cloud Outbound network traffic fee An outbound network traffic fee is charged for the network traffic from the Alibaba Cloud data center to the on-premises data center.

Fees are calculated on an hourly basis. Bills are generated on an hourly basis. A billing period less than an hour is calculated as an hour.

Billed based on data usage. Unit price: USD 0.015/GB
Note No outbound network traffic fee is charged until December 1, 2020.

Billing example

Take an on-premises data center in Beijing as an example. You own this data center. The data center is operated by China Unicom. You want to connect the data center to an Alibaba Cloud Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) network in the China (Beijing) region by using a leased line and access the Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances in the VPC network.

Related fees are calculated based on the following rules:

  • If you want to establish an exclusive physical connection, you must contact the service provider yourself. In this case, you must contact China Unicom and require China Unicom to connect your on-premises data center to an access point of Alibaba Cloud in Beijing through a leased line. China Unicom performs a site survey on resources of the Alibaba Cloud access point and provides you with a price quote. Alibaba Cloud assists China Unicom in the site survey. After you confirm the physical connection interface, Alibaba Cloud charges a one-time initial installation fee and helps complete the installation of cables. After the physical connection is established, Alibaba Cloud charges you a resource occupation fee.
  • If you want to establish a shared physical connection, you must contact the service provider yourself. In this case, you must contact China Unicom and require China Unicom to connect your on-premises data center to Alibaba Cloud through a leased line. The access points of China Unicom have been connected to the access points of Alibaba Cloud. Therefore, you must connect your on-premises data center to the access point of China Unicom nearest to your on-premises data center. China Unicom performs an end-to-end site survey on the lines between your on-premises data center and the data center of China Unicom. After the survey, China Unicom provides you with a price quote of all related service charges. During this process, Alibaba Cloud does not charge you any initial installation fee or resource occupation fee.
  • After you connect the on-premises data center to Alibaba Cloud, you must purchase and configure a Cloud Enterprise Network (CEN) instance, and add the VPC and Virtual Border Router (VBR) to the CEN instance. This enables interconnections between ECS instances in the VPC and servers on the premises.

Overdue payments

To avoid possible service interruptions, we recommend that you renew your physical connection instances or add funds to your account at the earliest opportunity.

If a physical connection instance uses the pay-as-you-go billing method, fees are not automatically deducted when the instance expires. You must set automatic renewal to avoid overdue payments and prevent the instance from being released due to overdue payments. For more information, see Renew an exclusive physical connection.

Billing method Expiration/Overdue payment Renewal
Subscription You will receive SMS or email notifications 168 hours, 72 hours, and 24 hours before a physical connection instance expires.
  • An instance will be stopped 360 hours after expiration.

    After a physical connection instance is stopped, both the instance and the associated VBR stop serving your workloads.

  • After a physical connection instance has been stopped for 360 hours, both the instance and the associated VBR are automatically deleted.

    You will receive an email notification one day before the physical connection instance is released. After the instance is released, relevant configurations and data are deleted and cannot be restored.

You can renew a physical connection instance during the subscription period or before the instance is released.