Although Karma recently announced that it was planning on cutting the speeds of its unlimited data plan, Neverstop — due to some people using hundreds of gigabytes per month — today, it announced a retooling of the plan and that it will restore speeds but throttle data after a certain amount is consumed.
Neverstop was first announced by Karma last year, and it was its first subscription data plan that cost users $50 per month. Speeds were offered at 5 Mbps for both uploads and downloads, and customers were able to use as many as three devices at a time.
After the plan was offered, users adapted to it for things like downloading large files and even online gaming, which resulted in racking up huge amounts of data used during the month. According to Karma, the hotspot was never intended to be a replacement for home Internet services, however, a survey revealed that almost 60 percent of users were using the device for just that.
Initially, it wanted to bring data speeds down to as low as 1.5 Mbps to discourage this, however, it is now saying that it is bringing the speed back up to 5 Mbps but will throttle that speed once a user reaches 15 GB in one month. According to the company, the throttled speed will not allow for things like video streaming.
In addition to the 15 GB limit, Karma is also introducing a refund plan. For each gigabyte that a user doesn’t use per month below that 15 GB limit, Karma will offer a refund of $1. That credit can be used to pay for the next month’s data usage.
Karma says that it eventually hopes to be able to replace home Internet services, however, it will take a few years before costs are low enough for it to be able to do that.
[“source-gadgets.ndtv”]
