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.

Comments

Unhappy customers...

[Richard_at_work]

Karma's "unlimited" users weren't pleased the first time the plan changed, and now they're practically through the roof.

If a company can't afford to deliver the product as sold, and they aren't bound to a contract to deliver that product as sold for more than one billing period, then what do these users think is going to happen - Karma Wireless is going to continue to provide a loss making service until the company goes under with massive debts?

Karma Wireless tried something, it failed (mainly because they screwed up forecasting costs) and now they are moving on.

Re:Unhappy customers...

[Anonymous Coward]

The calculations in finance can be perfect - it's where the numbers came from.

For example, my county was convinced by a professional sports team to foot the bill to build a new stadium. They provided all these projections and estimations of all the extra tax revenue the county will make and projections of the benefits to our economy.

All pie in the sky. And no one bothered to look to see that every city and county that paid for a sports stadium has gotten screwed.

Projections are a fancy way of saying "predicting the future."

So, replace "projections" with "predicting the future" and things sound real kooky - like late night psychic ads. Now, bear in mind, I am strictly speaking of financial issues and not science or engineering matters.

I brought this up to an engineer regarding revenue projections once and he replied. "They got the number from somewhere." Yeah, out of their ass. All the other calculations looked awesome and were perfect of course - thanks to Excel. Spreadsheets are a great way to fool people with real fancy looking numbers and calculations.

Perfect calculations are easy in this day and age, but the premise still has to be correct. And these tools can make the unreasonable look reasonable to those who don't ask hard and seemingly stupid questions.

Re:Wrong technology

[Puls4r]

Uh, really? Is there something inherent in 4G that somehow limits the total amount of data you can use per month? Or did you MEAN to say that the obvious lesson is that our mobile broadband companies in this country suck? Because the technology has nothing to do with the companies that are screwing folks over. 4G Seems to work for a whole lot less cost in many other places. Don't give me the old infrastructure bullshit either. You plan for huge volumes of data to be used, you make the capital outlay ONCE for the equipment, and you're good for 10-15 years. Instead, these companies do estimates of expected usage, drastically understate it, then purposefully buy the absolutely minimum about of infrastructure that will provide to their estimates. I.e., they'll continue to underprovide intentionally because scarcity allows them to jack up the prices.