A little more than a week after announcing plans to slow the speeds of its Neverstop unlimited data plan, Karma has reversed course.
Karma said today that it will be restoring the speeds of its Neverstop unlimited plan to 5Mbps after dropping them due to heavy usage from some customers. However, those 5Mbps speeds will only be available for your first 15GB of usage each month. After you use up 15GB in a cycle, your speeds will drop to a level that’s “good enough for email and chat.” Karma says that that’s around 64Kbps to 128Kbps.
Karma is making the change due to user feedback after customers told the company that “speed is important.” Starting today, Neverstop customers will get their usage reset to 0GB.
The return of 5Mbps speeds isn’t the only change that Karma announced today. The company also says that Neverstop customers that end their monthly cycle with less than 15GB used will get a $1 credit for each gigabyte that they don’t use.
Karma says that some of its Neverstop customers were using more than 1000GB of data in a month, and some 59 percent of folks admitted to using Neverstop for their home internet connection. While they were using an unlimited service — and Karma admits that those customers aren’t bad, they were just using “unlimited” as it was advertised — Karma’s service can’t handle that kind of usage. The company is an MVNO that uses Sprint’s network, and so it can’t let folks use thousands of gigs each month. With this latest change to the service, Karma has found a way to let most of its Neverstop customers enjoy the regular 5Mbps speeds while ensuring that folks that were previously using Neverstop as their home internet connection are no longer able to do so.
