Karma cancels Neverstop unlimited plan, replaces it with tiered subscription plan Pulse, priced at $40, $75, or $140/month with $15 per GB overage per month
Today we're pulling Neverstop off the shelves. Steven van Wel / Karma | Blog : Hello Pulse — When we first launched Karma, our mission was simple … John Callaham / Android Central : Karma ditches its Neverstop unlimited Wi-Fi data service for new Pulse tiered plans Nate Swanner / The Next Web : Karma changes its mind on unlimited data again, swaps Neverstop for Pulse Alan Henry / Lifehacker : Karma Kills the Neverstop Unlimited Plan, Introduces Pulse, a High-Data, No-Throttling Subscription Tweets: Jan Dawson / @jandawson : The curse of “unlimited” strikes again. Honestly, you'd think companies would learn this lesson... http://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Neverstop's life was short and rocky: Karma launched it in November 2015 as a $50/month unlimited data plan for its mobile hotspot ($50 unlimited launch), then within two months cut its speeds, walked that back by restoring 5 Mbps while adding a hard throttle to 64-128 Kbps past 15GB (the restore-and-throttle compromise). Each step signaled the economics weren't working.
Pulse is the endgame of that retreat: rather than keep patching an unlimited product, Karma replaces it outright with three tiers ($40/$75/$140) plus a steep $15/GB overage. Analyst Jan Dawson's reaction — the curse of 'unlimited' striking again — frames this as one more carrier discovering that flat-rate pricing doesn't survive contact with real network costs.
First-order effects
- Existing Neverstop subscribers lose their unlimited plan and must migrate to Pulse tiers or leave, with heavy users facing $15 per GB overages instead of the old post-15GB throttle.
- Karma swaps a single flat-price SKU for a three-tier ladder, directly tying its revenue to per-customer consumption instead of capping downside at $50.
Second-order effects
- The $15/GB overage makes Pulse's top $140 tier the de facto ceiling for heavy users, pushing data-hungry customers toward larger carriers' plans and leaving Karma positioned for light-to-moderate users.
- The July follow-up — private networks billed as Karma's first premium feature — shows the company already pivoting to add-ons beyond raw data, since tiered pricing alone no longer differentiates it.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — launch unlimited, throttle, then retire it within months — small MVNO-style operators will stop competing on unlimited claims altogether, conceding that battleground to carriers with owned spectrum and shifting competition to price-per-GB transparency and premium features.
The trend: Mobile data providers are abandoning unlimited plans in favor of capacity-aware tiered pricing, with overage fees replacing throttling as the congestion-management tool.