VegasTechFund-backed Karma Launches Subscription Data Plan

Three months after launching its second-generation Wi-Fi hotspots, VegasTechFund-backed New York startup Karma has gotten most of its Karma Go devices into customers’ hands. But there’s a new problem: for about one-quarter of users, Karma’s pay-as-you-go model is racking up bills too fast. Karma’s cofounder, CEO, and chief evangelist Steven van Wel tells Forbes that for the 25% of power users on their Go devices every day, Karma’s data plans were no longer cheaper than the competition. ”Pay as you go is good for someone who is traveling or using it a couple times a month, but it’s not so nice a fit if you’re using it every day,” says van Wel. Karma added to its pay-as-you-go narrative to include an unlimited option for the first time. For $50 per month, members of the “Neverstop” plan get unlimited data at a stable speed of 5 megabits per second, a little bit slower than the a la carte “Refuel” option’s speeds of 6 to 8 Mbps. That difference won’t typically be noticeable to a user, van Wel says. “It takes away the stress and fear of running out of data.” Read more about the company's announcement here.