Karma restores 5 Mbps speeds for $50 Neverstop unlimited data plan but will throttle to 64-128 Kbps after 15GB a month
Dan Seifert / The Verge :
Context & Ripple Effects
Neverstop launched in November as a flat $50/month unlimited hotspot plan, and by January Karma had already been caught cutting its speeds — a retreat it is now partially walking back. The restoration of full speeds on Neverstop comes with a new condition: a hard throttle to 64-128 Kbps once a subscriber crosses 15GB in a month.
The move reads less like generosity than damage control after the backlash over the earlier cuts, and it puts Karma's small-carrier unlimited plan squarely inside the same throttling playbook the big networks were already running.
First-order effects
- Neverstop subscribers get their 5 Mbps service back immediately, but anyone exceeding 15GB per month drops to dial-up-era speeds for the rest of their billing cycle.
- The plan's effective definition changes: 'unlimited' still holds at the headline price, but real-world capacity is now capped at roughly half of Sprint's own 23GB threshold.
Second-order effects
- Heavy-data customers who signed up for genuine unlimited service face a choice between accepting de facto rationing or leaving — pressure that Karma ultimately resolved by replacing Neverstop with the tiered Pulse plans.
- Karma's 15GB cap gives larger carriers like AT&T, whose unlimited users are only throttled during congestion, an easier comparison point when defending or adjusting their own policies.
Third-order effects
- The sequence — launch unlimited, cut speeds, rebrand throttling as policy, then cancel the plan for tiers — traces the industry-wide erosion of unlimited pricing into metered subscriptions under the same brand name.
- If every 'unlimited' plan converges on a soft cap enforced by throttling, regulators and consumer groups gain a concrete argument that the label itself needs defining, since the gap between marketed and delivered service becomes systematic rather than accidental.
The trend: Mobile unlimited data plans are converging on hidden soft caps enforced by throttling, with small carriers like Karma following the thresholds set by Sprint and AT&T before abandoning true unlimited entirely.