Karma - pay as you go data by sharing your hotspot

by ChrisArchitect • 14 years ago

216 119 14 years ago

dx4100• 14 years ago

This looks like another result of CLEAR opening up their network for other vendors to sell their data. Freedompop is doing a similar thing, just without the Karma component to it.

Nice to see what happens when a company like CLEAR opens things up -- all sorts of innovation springs.

ozi• 14 years ago

Except the CLEAR network blows. I used to have a couple retail stores and sold them off because I felt terrible getting so many complaints about service quality and could see the company already declining as key investors were pulling out.

The nodes were initially unsaturated and speedy -- you could often get 15-20mbps on mobile hotspot. Now people are lucky to get 512kbps on their home modems in moderately dense residential areas.

trotsky5• 14 years ago

Out of curiosity, do you know if this is more due to wimax cell saturation or backhaul limitations?

degroat• 14 years ago

Clear's network isn't great, but I really like the pay-as-you go aspect of this. Right now I'm paying $25 a month for an unlocked iSpot but I go weeks without using it.

ChrisArchitect• 14 years ago

neat idea, useful for travelling groups or work sessions on the go. What's the catch tho? Facebook login? Suspect. Ads popping up on every hotspot user's web browsing? Or does paying for the device cover them

dangrossman3• 14 years ago

> What's the catch tho?

I don't see one. It's pay-per-gigabyte 4G internet plus a referral program that pays a commission of 100MB free data usage per user.

> Facebook login? Suspect.

That's to prevent gaming the referral program. Linking to a Facebook account means you can't give yourself unlimited data by continually changing your device info before connecting.

> Or does paying for the device cover them

You pay for the device and the data.

digeridoo3• 14 years ago

Why should there be a catch if you're paying $14/GB? Not exactly a bargain. There are very similar offerings like the one from Virgin mobile at a similar price point.

syquek• 14 years ago

Should saying "most sites use HTTPS" be the way to explain security of this set up?

VikingCoder• 14 years ago

This is interesting - but I'd like to see some reviews. I can get $10 for a GB with my Chromebook, but it does expire at the end of the month...

davidu2• 14 years ago

I prefer the OpenGarden model for this, which is entirely software based, and thus only needs an Android (and hopefully soon iOS) phone to accomplish the exact same. And as speeds and phones get faster and more pervasive, their distribution model is far better than Karma's.

(Disclosure, I'm an investor in OpenGarden)

toxictexan2• 14 years ago

I've been meaning to try OpenGarden and I agree to some extent that OpenGarden might be a better solution. However I think the mobile hotspot such as Karma, Freedom, etc offer the benefit of not chewing through your smartphone's battery and your plan's data limits.

davidu2• 14 years ago

Battery is an issue for now. Data limits will be resolved but the reality is, most folks are far under their plan.

jeepey2• 14 years ago

Are multiple devices connected to the same hotspot able to communicate? I don't want any random person in the coffeeshop to be able to access my machine.

otoburb2• 14 years ago

Provided the random person in the coffeeshop has a Karma account, then they would be able to use the same hotspot. I believe the product information states that up to 8 devices can be connected to your hotspot.

icebraining• 14 years ago

I think the question is whether two devices connected to the same hotspot can send packets to each other. Ideally, you want to isolate them as much as possible, letting them connect only to the Internet.

cstefanovici• 14 years ago

I just bought this. Every time someone connects to your hotspot, you both get some free extra data. Also it never expires, and the bandwidth is tied to the account, not the device so I can my account on someones else's device as well. This sounds like a winner.

akeck• 14 years ago

Are users who share their hotspot indemnified if someone browses something illegal via their hotspot? In light of the recent prosecution of Tor exit-node operators, this service seems like it could create similar risk to the end users who share. (Edit: Ninja addition)

guiambros• 14 years ago

Excellent question. I'd love to see it officially answered as well.

I guess the hotspot owner is protected, given that users are identified by their own Facebook account and the credit card used to pay for the charges.

jiggy2011• 14 years ago

If you had indemnity you could just set one of these up and go on your merry way doing what the hell illegal stuff you like so I'm guessing not.

Remember that even if you don't happen to get found guilty in court you could be looking at having the police turn up one day and confiscate all of your computers for several months as well as digging through your email etc.

thatmiddleway• 14 years ago

Facebook required to create an account?

FAIL.

toxictexan2• 14 years ago

agree 100%

codegeek• 14 years ago

agreed

xyzzy1232• 14 years ago

First social hotspot? So not at all like FON then?

Edit: I don't see any U.S. sites in the FON coverage map, and the 4g aspect is genuinely new.

muhfuhkuh• 14 years ago

Could it be? Does this mean my wife and I can use our unlocked iPhones with voice-only (t-mobile, maybe?) sim cards and use this Karma thing as our data plan? We're paying US$15/mo each for 200MB data. It's ridiculous. And, we're on HSPA+, not even LTE (AT&T, don't even ask; I can have full bars and it still takes forever to load up text-heavy pages).

dangrossman3• 14 years ago

Do you talk a lot? T-Mobile has an unlimited data, unlimited text, 100 minute no-contract plan for $30/month. I'm using it with my Nexus 4. Additional talk time is $0.10/minute.

jedbrown• 14 years ago

How did you actually get that plan with your Nexus 4? I've been a T-mobile customer for several years, always owning my phone outright (now a Nexus 4), but they gave me a serious run-around, telling me that particular plan was a promotional thing that could only be used with a Walmart handset.

w1ntermute• 14 years ago

Well, be sure to check the coverage map, because there are some large cities with no coverage (like San Diego).

jcurbo• 14 years ago

I don't know about T-Mobile, but I think AT&T and Verizon both require smartphones to have a data plan, and they can detect if you have a smartphone and force you to have a data plan because of that.

stephengillie6• 14 years ago

I don't know about AT&T and T-Mobile, but Verizon and Sprint (CDMA) phones have the IMEI/MEID tied to the phone since there's no SIM. It works a bit like a VIN on a car I think. This means they know what phone you're activating during activation.

3825• 14 years ago

I have often wondered why...

lotsofpulp• 14 years ago

In my experience with ATT, they only know what your phone is if you purchase it through ATT. If, for example, you buy a Nexus 4 from Google and tell ATT that it's a dumb phone, they won't know it's actually a smartphone since they don't have the IMEI on file.

stephengillie6• 14 years ago

Do you have internet at home? Do you have a wireless router? If you can use karma, why don't you just set up your own home wifi?

morphyn2• 14 years ago

Fon (http://corp.fon.com/en) have been doing something similar for several years in Europe (without the karma concept).

xyzzy1232• 14 years ago

Well, it's rather like karma: "As a member of the Fon community, you agree to share a little bit of your WiFi at home, and get free roaming at Fon Spots worldwide in return."

koopajah• 14 years ago

Not exactly because you don't have the ratio idea where you have to share XXX MB with someone before having YYY MB for yourself.

In France Free is a well-known ISP offering this kind of feature with its ADSL box. You open your WI-FI to others and then you have access to every other WIFI shared by users from this ISP.

morphyn2• 14 years ago

My bad, it's pretty much the same. I didn't know about their "money making WiFi" feature. Pretty sure they didn't have it when they launched.

evoxed• 14 years ago

Not just Europe– I had a test unit from way back for when they were entering the US, though they never got really big (I do see them occasionally). In Japan I see them everywhere.

sdsantos• 14 years ago

The second large ISP in Portugal has FON active by default on their routers. It's really easy to find one here.

SnowLprd• 14 years ago

I find it interesting that there is no coverage in Santa Monica, arguably the most tech-centric section of Los Angeles. Plus, requiring folks to use Facebook to get a Karma account is a very unfortunate decision.

stephengillie6• 14 years ago

As a reseller, their coverage is completely based on CLEAR's coverage, like how Virgin Mobile is entirely based on Sprint's coverage. It's as though Karma is a MIVO - Mobile Internet Virtual Operator.

Why CLEAR has no coverage in Santa Monica is a very good question.

zacharypinter• 14 years ago

I love the concept.

One important part that should be added though (I couldn't tell from the website if they already do something like this):

When using it to share your personal internet connection, guest wifi connections should have all their internet traffic proxied/vpn'ed through the service's own internet connection. That way, the service itself keeps track of who was connected when, and if anything illicit happens through the connection they can follow up on the account that was used. Doing so would take away the largest concern I currently have with opening up my home internet connection. I'm happy to share the bandwidth I'm not using, but I don't want my name tied to that traffic.

klinquist• 14 years ago

With this device, you are not sharing your home internet connection. You are sharing the 4G internet connection, and I believe it does work as you describe - the individual must login and pay for access (and when they do, you, as the owner of the device, gets a free 100mb).

hackmiester• 14 years ago

I don't think they have to pay, as they begin with 100 MB of traffic. They get a free 100 MB, you get a free 100 MB.

kstenerud• 14 years ago

Sounds like a chicken-and-egg problem. Unless your area is already saturated with karma users, you likely won't get any data benefits.

Arie• 14 years ago

If someone just uses your hotspot (signs in through Facebook :/ ), you get free data.

trotsky5• 14 years ago

note that this is clearwire wimax only - a network that is actively shrinking as they transition to lte and their partner (sprint) decommissions iDen cells.

You can get a similar price item with better connectivity but without the gimmicks from sprint's budget brand: $79 for a wimax+3g hotspot, $35/mo for 2 gigs of 3g data on sprint (evdo rev a) and "unlimited" wimax. or $5/day for 200mb/"unlimited"(activated for just the days you use it)

sprint's evdo rev a network performs pretty poorly, but it is way better than not having a signal, something that will be true more often than not with wimax only service.

Samuel_Michon• 14 years ago

"sprint's budget brand: $79 for a wimax+3g hotspot"

I had to look for it, but here it is, apparently Sprint uses the Virgin brand name in the US:

http://www.virginmobileusa.com/shop/mobile-broadband/broadba...

I'll be in the US for the rest of the year, so I'm buying one of these - way cheaper than international roaming. Thanks for the tip!

trotsky5• 14 years ago

Had intended to include a link - my bad & thanks for providing it.

stephengillie6• 14 years ago

@parent comment: Virgin is an MNVO that buys airtime from Sprint and resells it.

@GP comment: AND you can just buy a CLEAR hotspot for $50 and pay $50/mo for their unlimited service.

edit: tried to make it more clear...

driverdan2• 14 years ago

While the Virgin Mobile hotspot is a good deal its service can be worse than Clear, despite piggybacking on it. I have a Clear Apollo hotspot ($50/m, unlimited WiMax). Recently I used mine side-by-side with a friend's VM hotspot. I got 4/5 bars with 8Mbit/1Mbit. He got 2/5 bars and couldn't maintain a connection. It's possible my device has a better antenna than his but that doesn't seem like the issue since my signal was so strong.

rektide• 14 years ago

Oh, wimax, that's unfortunate: I was hoping it was piggybacking some LTE or HSDPA network. This is no longer nearly as interesting.

That said, this being a pay-per-use device is awesome, and it being useful to anyone nearby is doubly awesome. $15/GB is a way better pay-per-use price than anyone else out there. Walmart TruConnect, for example, is a 3G only device that is $45/GB.

Real pay per use encourages us to be thrifty with out bandwidth, to connect to wifi, and to not worry about a silly over-utilization feees (going over) or silly under-utilization (per month plans far in excess of actual usage). I highly look forward to this less stressful pay-per-use data economy taking root.

artursapek2• 14 years ago

You need a Facebook profile to give them money? Why would they do that to themselves?

brebory2• 14 years ago

They sum up their reasoning pretty succinctly here: https://yourkarma.com/help/75-why-do-i-have-to-login-with-fa...

Groxx2• 14 years ago

Because it's so hard to make a fake Facebook account. If someone actually wants to cause trouble, requiring Facebook won't do anything except slow them down for about 20 seconds. I see this "reason" everywhere, but it's total garbage.

cupcake-unicorn2• 14 years ago

Wasn't there a guy in Australia who got his house raided for having Tor exit servers? How long is it going to take before people use this for something like child pornography and you go to jail?

eupharis2• 14 years ago

YES! Bought. So disruptive. Goodbye dumbphone. Hellloooo karma. Skipped right over the buying smartphone "minutes" and "text" nonsense.

Genius marketing model. If I get to customize the SSID it'll be something like: "yourkarma.com, use this wifi!". SSID can only be 32 characters. A shorter, recognizable domain like "kar.ma" would be awesome. More space for cleverness.

Living in a busy apartment complex near the center of downtown Portland, close to a couple coffee shops... visitors at all the neighboring apartments.... I wonder if I'll ever have to actually buy data directly.

The train station in Portland doesn't have any wifi. Talk the staff into letting you run a cord to one of the lockers. Or several. Win-win! Also, the university. They do have guest access, but it's annoying to login.

So many places to stash these. The possibilities are endless!

Minor quibble: says "We'll give you 1GB for free" on splash page. Actually only gives 100MB.

alieander• 14 years ago

Looks to me like they give you 1GB free when you purchase the device. Sneaky...

brebory2• 14 years ago

You actually can't name your hotspot currently. It automatically names itself [name]'s Karma, pulled from your facebook info.

Their reasoning - https://yourkarma.com/help/5-why-can-t-i-change-the-name-of-...

jrockway• 14 years ago

This makes me want to create an network of access point named "x Karma" that installs viruses and malware. "Viral marketing," I'll call it.

stephengillie6• 14 years ago

Please remember that this isn't a phone/text/data service. This is ONLY internet. If you have Skype/Google Voice/Lync/etc then you can place phone calls with an internet (IP) phone or computer or device. Likewise for text messages.

You could keep this on your person, and just be a walking mobile hotspot.

Kerrick2• 14 years ago

I do this already: I use VoIP for talk and Google Voice for messaging on my Nexus 4. I don't have a minute plan, and only use data.

fudged712• 14 years ago

Did somebody say hobo hotspot?

BHSPitMonkey• 14 years ago

100MB is the bonus you get whenever someone new connects to your device (seems like a referral bonus); 1GB is how much your account is pre-loaded with when you buy one of these things.

edu2• 14 years ago

But isn't that exactly what http://www.fon.com/ has been doing for several years already?

ybaumes3• 14 years ago

It seems fon requires you already have an isp connection. Fon allows you to share it with others. The balance is that on a trip you will be able to access fon hotspot for free (?). Here Karma embeds a 4G connection, AFAIU. Am I correct?

edu2• 14 years ago

After reviewing both pages I think you're 100% correct.

driverdan2• 14 years ago

A good idea but with far too little bandwidth. 1GB / 100MB is nothing. Between syncing git repos, remote backup, Dropbox, and heavy web browsing (not including Netflix) I go through at least 5GB a day. I'll stick with Clear's own access point at $50/m for unlimited access. It works pretty well in most cities but can be sensitive to positioning.

jerf• 14 years ago

You are the 1%.

digeridoo3• 14 years ago

or the future of the remaining 99%...

lnanek2• 14 years ago

The idea is worthless if no one has to buy, remember. The whole idea is to give out a little free to get people connected and hooked, let them use up their data, then charge the hell out of them.

I think it's awesome, by the way. It basically the freemium model that is kicking ass in software right now, ported over to the real world.

natemartin• 14 years ago

If it is truly facebook only, that eliminates this for me. Too bad.

cupcake-unicorn2• 14 years ago

Haha, I also noticed this on their website:

"Everyone throws gigabytes and megabytes around, but what do they really mean?"

It's a mystery!

Not really catering to the "Hacker News" crowd...

rachelbythebay• 14 years ago

I always suspected the real money in this sort of plan is selling the devices to people who think they're going to make money by reselling access. The timing of this announcement is particularly interesting to me, since I just wrote about the "selling pickaxes" model over the weekend. Strange.

pdenya2• 14 years ago

It looks like you don't make money by reselling access, you just get extra data for yourself to use.

6ren• 14 years ago

Maybe, Amway wifi? Pyramid sharing? One way to kick off ad hoc suburban networks...

> The average person uses only 500MB, per device, per month.

I used 19GB last month, without even trying. To be fair, that's at home, not on a mobile "device".

ybaumes3• 14 years ago

They probably targeting non-geek users I guess. People only needing email access, news/internet browsing. As stated above geek users use their connection more actively.

digeridoo3• 14 years ago

That seems like it might be driven more by a lack of supply than a lack of demand. Why not have Spotify on all the time?

svachalek• 14 years ago

I had an image of what this was before I clicked the link but I was disappointed.

Here's my idea: No hardware required. You share your existing connection (mobile or not). It's public except the user needs to give you some sort of token that you can't forge and shows how much time they used. In turn you can use those tokens to get time on other people's wifi.

Basically "pay it forward" with a little bit of abuse prevention. Maybe the tokens are BitCoin, but it would probably work better if it was a little more "karma" like and the accounting wasn't so strict.

pdenya2• 14 years ago

These will be available in places where there's no existing wifi which seems much cooler to me.

hosh2• 14 years ago

I was thinking about this a while ago when I started hearing about the Super WiFi / Regional Area Network and meshing networks like the equipment they were testing for the Occupy protests.

This is useful for if you wanted to recolonize urban blight areas, such as Detroit, and you could not get enough capital to pull wire (or don't know whether the wired infrastructure rotted).

I doubt this will let a lot of people consume streaming video, but it would let people pass around 3D printable files, Open Source Ecology documents, and stream bits of Wikipedia.

mtgentry• 14 years ago

Cool idea but at the end of the day, your idea encourages people to violate the terms of service they have with their ISP. Karma gets around that.

fudged712• 14 years ago

1) Battery drain. 2) Your phone isn't a great router. Having dedicated hardware to do this would be far better.

Cogito3• 14 years ago

I was thinking about this too, but there is one problem with a purely pay-it-forward type model - there is no 'debt'.

That is, how does one earn karma in order to buy uptime?

You can 'sell' your connection to someone else, but where do they get their karma from?

Part of the solution might be to provide 'seed' karma to new users, but then you inevitably will have users who don't spend the karma they gain and so become karma sinks.

This all assumes a zero sum economy, so perhaps a different model is a better idea. Keep track of metrics like how much bandwidth someone has shared or used (somehow), and then allow providers to define a measure for who can share their connection based on those metrics.

For example, one provider might let anyone connect no matter what, while someone else might only let people who have shared their own connection connect.

Determining what to share and to whom is a hard question, and when there are upstream costs to the provider the balance seems like it would be hard to find. The yourkarma model is more or less a loss-leading strategy (we pay you in bandwidth to sign up new users) and it's hard to see that being sustainable long term for the user. It's not completely obvious if the 100mb is for new karma users connecting, or for any connection, but based on their help page[1] it seems to be only new users:

Why do I get extra bandwidth when I share my connection?

Every time another person uses Karma, our company grows a little bigger. The more the merrier! So when you share your connection, you are essentially helping us and we feel like we should help you. After all, we’re not called Karma for nothing.

What I am really interested in are the ad-hoc networking projects [2], that will be able to route data by hopping between networked devices, reducing the need of centralised ISPs. Simply being part of that network adds value, however similar problems will probably arise in any case.

[1] https://yourkarma.com/help/82-why-do-i-get-extra-bandwidth-w...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_ad_hoc_network

jessaustin2• 14 years ago

> inevitably will have users who don't spend the karma they gain and so become karma sinks.

This doesn't seem like a problem to me. A karma sink is a connectivity source. Surely we're trying to optimize for the latter quantity? If it makes you feel bad you can give away prizes or something.

hosh2• 14 years ago

Now, if this were paid by bitcoin, or the karma was signed by the bitcoin contracts (http://codinginmysleep.com/exotic-transaction-types-with-bit...), then we might even avoid lock-in ...

ybaumes3• 14 years ago

I am wondering whether Facebook ONLY connection is part of the business model. Do it allow Karma to share your internet usage data more easily with Facebook? And monetize those data (like the list of website you browse)?

I didn't find anything related in the "Terms of Service".

Anyway, a private vpn could do the trick I guess. But then such set-up would prohibits me from dropping my ISP at home and rely only on karma...

mortenjorck• 14 years ago

Exactly why I wouldn't feel comfortable with this. I haven't logged into Facebook from my primary browser in at least a year or two because of their Like beacons – there's no way I'm tying my FB account to my mobile ISP.

fatbat• 14 years ago

FreedomPop user here and since the device and network are similar, I am going to say the coverage is actually pretty weak (will not comment on speed since I have not been able to use it much!)

For users seeking mobile hotspots, FreedomPop is clearly the better deal. I do not see how Karma can compete there...

http://www.freedompop.com/

obilgic• 14 years ago

So why do you want me to share my karma device? Will the guests pay for their own internet? Do they need karma account too? Too little information ...

Groxx2• 14 years ago

I love the idea, but there are two massive blockers for me: Facebook, and no encryption. Yeah, yeah, most things use HTTPS/SSL/ETC. But not everything. And I don't have a Facebook account.

mentat2• 14 years ago

"Is it safe? You have nothing to fear. Karma is as safe as Wi-Fi in your coffee shop. Most sites use HTTPS, like Facebook and Google, making your connection secure."

"as safe as Wi-Fi in your coffee shop" is not very safe at all. Before FireSheep people could pick off sessions to all these major websites. It's my understanding that mobile applications connected to Wi-Fi still often have these problems.

trotsky5• 14 years ago

It's also trivial to be able to pose as someone else's computer on coffeeshop style wifi networks. It's likely the same is true here, which would allow anyone inclined to pose as the owner which could suck with a usage based pricing model.

mentat2• 14 years ago

Yeah, I was wondering if it was MAC based. I ordered one so I'll see how badly it breaks once they actually ship them. It's too bad because they probably could do something clever like cross service 802.1x. One SSID for enrollment and the other using 802.1x for all enrolled people (perhaps using a service-wide SSID so you could "roam").

scotty79• 14 years ago

What I would really like is a system where I can provide open access to internet and people who connect via my hotspot report the amount of traffic I passed for them to central system and when I'm in need of a connection I can use some other people connections within my credit earned by providing internet connection for other people.

harel• 14 years ago

I'm not sure I get the deal: You buy bandwidth and then give it away in order to get some more free bandwidth. What is the catch though? Why do they want you to share your bandwidth? What are they getting out of it?

davecap1• 14 years ago

More people sharing bandwidth = more signups = more customers = more $$$

blaines2• 14 years ago

DANGER! I've been a clearwire customer, their service sucks. You'll get good service up to a certain amount (at or below 1gb by my experience), then you'll be throttled back to 1999 for the rest of your billing cycle. DANGER!

Also see ozi's comment below.

iloverobots• 14 years ago

Since this is pay as you go at a rather high rate (versus an all-you-can-eat subscription), throttling would only disadvantage the providers, especially since Karma probably pays Clearwire by bandwidth as well.

bfung• 14 years ago

A couple of points to ponder, more on the "social" aspect:

1. Will there be bandwidth miners / marketing / spammers? Since I get free usage the more people connect to my device, I would tell everyone to connect to me! HEY YOU, EVEN IF YOU DON'T WANT INTERWEBS, CONNECT TO MY DEVICE!! (There's probably an optimal number of connected devices to the karma for best bandwidth usage and latency, but nothing prevents someone from just mining free usage)

2. Will people start "selling" their free bandwidth?

But overall, I like the use of promoting sharing by positive reinforcement for a useful, limited resource. It's close to Zynga games (spam your friends for more virtual resources, which were unlimited in the first place), but somehow feels better...

weisser• 14 years ago

It costs $14.99 for 250 megabytes per month of internet for my iPad through ATT. That's unacceptable. I bought one of these instantly.

The ripple effect of purchases was incredible when this was announced. A musician friend who is not a tech person in the slightest posted about it within 30 minutes of the TC article-a site I know he doesn't read-meaning it already spread through a few people before it reached him. Within five minutes of seeing his post I bought one. I shared it to my Facebook wall and 3 people have said they bought one because of my post within 12 hours and I only have 269 friends.

gfodor• 14 years ago

So is this a valid strategy? Basically find a local coffeeshop or place of general laptoppery that lacks good wifi and hide your karma somewhere clever, and come back a day or two later after you watch the free bandwidth rack up? You'd just need to figure out a way to keep it powered, probably a battery pack or something.

I'd imagine just stashing one of these in SFO somewhere would get you a shitton of free data. (editted, misread pricing. you'd need about 60 people to get on it before you've paid for the device if it were stolen.)

nickwoodhams• 14 years ago

What happens when someone nearby using your Karma buys more data and the you pack up and leave?

Karma - pay as you go data by sharing your hotspot

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