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JiminDenver's avatar
JiminDenver
Explorer II
Jan 18, 2016

The next chapter for Karma's unlimited hotspot.

A while back Karma introduced a hotspot plan that was unlimited data throttled to 5mbps for $50. Recently they tried to control the data hogs by throttling it even farther down to 1.5 download speeds and that didn't go over to well.

This is the latest chapter.


"Last week we announced that we were testing lower speeds to find a way to reduce strain on Neverstop. At the same time we asked for your input to improve it and have spent the last week analyzing your feedback.
What Happened

We made a mistake. We modeled Neverstop usage to be much higher than usage on Refuel. But we never anticipated that some customers would use over 1,000GB a month.

Some of you asked why we don't kick off the bad guys. Frankly, we don't think there are any bad guys. We offered an all-you-can-surf option, and people took us up on it. That's on us.

But usage this high is not something that will work today.

The other thing made clear in your feedback is that speed is important. Slowing it down was not a good solution, which is understandable.
What’s Next

Getting online with Neverstop should be simple and work well for most use cases. Here's the update:

5Mbps up and down speeds are coming back
Get 15GB of data per month. After this, you’ll still be online but with speeds good enough for emailing and messaging
Earn a $1 credit for each unused GB

Beginning today at 10am ET, everyone on Neverstop will get a fresh start at 0GB. Based on current usage, this change will have little to no impact for most of you, while still reducing strain on Neverstop. But, if you’re looking to binge watch Netflix 24/7, this probably isn’t the product for you. If that’s the case, head to our returns page and we’ll take it from there.

Our mission is providing you frictionless internet connectivity. Now it's our job to continue iterating to make it happen. There’s a lot to be done."

So it went from a great deal to a plan that is to be considered vs others offered. My Cricket plan is only 10 gigs a month for %65 including the hot spot. 4GAS has 5 gigs a month throttled to 5 plus Binge On for $17 a month. Both throttle to 128 kb after the limits.

10 Replies

  • Bill_Satellite's avatar
    Bill_Satellite
    Explorer II
    Jan 22, 2016
    At least the Karma sharing is only 100MB so if they are sitting out front, they won't be there long.
  • JiminDenver's avatar
    JiminDenver
    Explorer II
    Jan 22, 2016
    Maybe if Sprint does move some towers to public lands, I'll get some coverage where I need it.

    As for the sharing part, xfinity has that on my modem and it creeps me out when strangers pull up in front of the house and just sit in their cars. They say my side is protected and unaffected but things really slow down when it happens. No worries. Unplug modem and use hotspot until they go away. :)
  • mlts22's avatar
    mlts22
    Explorer II
    Jan 21, 2016
    For rural areas where there are not people nearby to leech from your cellular router, this may be OK... but in a more population dense place like a RV park, it wouldn't be surprising to get a neighbor finding the open Wi-Fi (you can't password-protect a Karma hotspot) and going whole-hog 4K streaming on the pipe, which affects the bandwidth allocated to the Neverstop user before they get throttled.

    Of course, it is wise to use a VPN on all devices. This way, if someone hops on with some Wi-Fi sniffing tools like WireShark or tcpdump (both which are part of most Linux distributions), they won't be able to do anything with the traffic on the lines.
  • Gene_Ginny's avatar
    Gene_Ginny
    Explorer
    Jan 19, 2016
    This got a lot of discussion on HowardForums. Someone even had a link to an archive of their initial advertising showing "all you can use for $50/month".
  • Dutch_12078's avatar
    Dutch_12078
    Explorer III
    Jan 18, 2016
    MrWizard wrote:
    1000gig where and how did they get that number
    I'm a heavy user, with large downloads, and have NEVER hit 100gig

    Even at 1 gig per hour for Netflix hd, you can only hit less than 24 gig in 24 hrs

    Multiple users on the same connection?
  • JiminDenver's avatar
    JiminDenver
    Explorer II
    Jan 18, 2016
    My thought would have been to do a sliding speedometer. Low data users would enjoy unlimited data at the top speed but stream a movie and the speed starts dropping. It would come back up if you didn't stream another movie for a day or two and drop even farther if you did. Stream too much too often and you could end up at email only speeds for the rest of the month.

    That way the low and moderate users could keep the good speeds and high end users would look for a better option.
  • JiminDenver's avatar
    JiminDenver
    Explorer II
    Jan 18, 2016
    1492 wrote:
    Perhaps you can enlighten us about Karma should you have experience using them? Some aspects are not clear to me from their webpage?

    Is their hotspot WiFi connection non-secure? Not using an encrypted protocol such as as WPA2, etc which cannot be changed?

    Have you noticed if their free guest connection mode uses the existing 5Mbs bandwidth rate, effectively reducing your data rate? Or does it use its own bandwidth above your allotted 5Mbps?


    Personally used it? no but I do know a handful of users and researched it pretty heavily in my own preparations.

    Which ever plan you get with Karma, your hotspot is open for others to use. Like my xfinity wifi, the personal side of the hotspot is suppose to be separated from the sharing side. You get either free data or cash for allowing each person to connect. $1 or 100 MB's per connection. One person reported collecting more data than he was using.

    They say you will never notice someone using it but I have had my xfinity act up when people sat out front on their laptops. It gets kinda creepy after a while and I have been known to unplug the modem just to get them to move along.
  • MrWizard's avatar
    MrWizard
    Moderator
    Jan 18, 2016
    1000gig where and how did they get that number
    I'm a heavy user, with large downloads, and have NEVER hit 100gig

    Even at 1 gig per hour for Netflix hd, you can only hit less than 24 gig in 24 hrs
  • 1492's avatar
    1492
    Moderator
    Jan 18, 2016
    Perhaps you can enlighten us about Karma should you have experience using them? Some aspects are not clear to me from their webpage?

    Is their hotspot WiFi connection non-secure? Not using an encrypted protocol such as as WPA2, etc which cannot be changed?

    Have you noticed if their free guest connection mode uses the existing 5Mbs bandwidth rate, effectively reducing your data rate? Or does it use its own bandwidth above your allotted 5Mbps?

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