Karma Cuts Speed in Its Unlimited Plan [Update: No Longer, but There Will Be Restrictions]
Karma, one of our favorite mobile hotspots , announced a $ 50 fixed unlimited data plan a few months ago. If you’ve jumped on it, be careful – your bandwidth speed may slow down a bit. That’s why.
Karma’s unlimited plan was designed to give people as much bandwidth as they need to travel and stay connected without having to worry about recharging their hotspot. You can (and can still) buy data by the gigabyte, but an unlimited plan called Neverstop lets you browse, stream, and download data anytime you want.
Well, people have definitely figured this out, and Karma says over 90% of its new users signed up to Neverstop and other current users switched. That’s great, but now about 60% of Karma subscribers use it for basic home Internet access. All of the problems associated with the work of the ISP are connected with this: subscribers download large files, perform backups in the cloud, a lot of streaming, and so on. Karma says they can’t handle it, so they’ll have to slow down a bit in their No-Limit plan to make up for it.
Road warriors using their hotspot on the go probably won’t notice much of a difference, but those at home, users plugging in all my devices and heavy bootloaders might feel pinched. When Neverstop launched, customers saw speeds of around 5 Mbps and want to drop speeds to 1.5-2.5 Mbps, although they haven’t settled on digital yet. To read more about this story, check out the Verge version below.
Update 01/18/2016 : Karma released a statement today saying they’ve heard feedback from their users and won’t strangle anyone anytime soon. However, they will introduce data caps on their high-end plans, which means that Neverstop’s “unlimited” plan is no longer unlimited. Here’s what they said in the statement :
Getting online with Neverstop should be easy and work well in most situations. Here’s the update:
- Returning speeds of 5 Mbps up and down
- Get 15 GB of data per month. After that, you will still be online, but at a speed sufficient for email and chat (about 64-128 Kbps).
- Get $ 1 for every unused GB
Starting today, all Neverstop users will start a new life with 0GB. Based on current usage, this change will have little to no impact on most of you, but it will reduce the load on Neverstop. But if you want to watch Netflix 24/7, this product is probably not for you.
Karma offers refunds to users who think the new restrictions will affect them and reminds users that they can check their current usage at any time with their Android and iOS mobile apps.
Karma Slows Down The Speed Of Its Unlimited Data Plan | Facets