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.
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).
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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)
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.
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...
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.
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?
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).
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.
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.
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.
[+] [-] zacharypinter|13 years ago|reply
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|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mentat|13 years ago|reply
"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.
[+] [-] trotsky|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eupharis|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] stephengillie|13 years ago|reply
You could keep this on your person, and just be a walking mobile hotspot.
[+] [-] brebory|13 years ago|reply
Their reasoning - https://yourkarma.com/help/5-why-can-t-i-change-the-name-of-...
[+] [-] alieander|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BHSPitMonkey|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shutthefuckup|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] morphyn|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] evoxed|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xyzzy123|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sdsantos|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] driverdan|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jerf|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lnanek2|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] svachalek|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Cogito|13 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] hosh|13 years ago|reply
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|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fudged71|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pdenya|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] artursapek|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brebory|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trotsky|13 years ago|reply
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|13 years ago|reply
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!
[+] [-] driverdan|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rektide|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ybaumes|13 years ago|reply
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|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gfodor|13 years ago|reply
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.)
[+] [-] dx4100|13 years ago|reply
Nice to see what happens when a company like CLEAR opens things up -- all sorts of innovation springs.
[+] [-] ozi|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] akeck|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jiggy2011|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] guiambros|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] fatbat|13 years ago|reply
For users seeking mobile hotspots, FreedomPop is clearly the better deal. I do not see how Karma can compete there...
http://www.freedompop.com/
[+] [-] Groxx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xyzzy123|13 years ago|reply
Edit: I don't see any U.S. sites in the FON coverage map, and the 4g aspect is genuinely new.
[+] [-] thatmiddleway|13 years ago|reply
FAIL.
[+] [-] edu|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ybaumes|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] muhfuhkuh|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dangrossman|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cupcake-unicorn|13 years ago|reply
"Everyone throws gigabytes and megabytes around, but what do they really mean?"
It's a mystery!
Not really catering to the "Hacker News" crowd...
[+] [-] davidu|13 years ago|reply
(Disclosure, I'm an investor in OpenGarden)
[+] [-] toxictexan|13 years ago|reply