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Bad Karma: WISP Pares Back Its Monthly 4G Hotspot Plan, Again
Robotech_Master writes: The ongoing saga of the Neverstop plan shows that Karma Wireless just can't seem to catch a break as far as high-bandwidth plans are concerned. After starting out with a straight pay-per-bandwidth plan, "Refuel," for its $150 wireless hotspot, Karma thought it would innovate with a throttled-but-otherwise-unlimited 4G plan, "Neverstop." However, it soon discovered that users were taking it at its word and using up considerably more bandwidth than Karma expected or could afford. After experimenting with further throttling, Karma subsequently revamped the plan into a $50 per month, 15 GB plan that throttled to dialup speed after it ran out.
However, now it turns out even that plan was too optimistic, and Karma has opted to dump the Neverstop plan altogether in favor of tiered monthly plan called Pulse —whose bandwidth costs significantly more. ($40/mo for 5 GB, $75 for 10 GB, $140 for 20 GB.) Karma's "unlimited" users weren't pleased the first time the plan changed, and now they're practically through the roof.
wireless is somewhat like the old layer 1 and 2 switches in that if one user's netflix stream is broadcasting then everyone else's traffic has to wait. granted the antenna does it very fast but too many people using high bandwidth data will slow the network to a crawl because the one antenna will have to alternate between transmitting everyone else's content and receiving data from end user devices. and that's not even going into the fact that other devices from other carriers on neighboring frequencies are also doing the same thing and everyone is always having to filter out unwanted traffic. I live close to a major NYC traffic artery and every night at rush hour my AT&T service is pretty much useless because everyone is driving home and streaming their music. Wireless is not like switched network traffic where the data can be switched to the right wire and not interfere with anyone else's data