How does FreedomPop make money?
latimes.com
latimes.com
I used straight talk for years, and I'm now on project fi. Both are miles above FreedomPop.
Anyway, comments on Amazon and/or Newegg about using the G5+ on Fi state that it works but that calls can only be made on the T-Mobile network. IIRC -- this wasn't a factor, for me, so I didn't make a mental note to self to particularly remember that detail.
At this point, I really, really like Project Fi. Too bad Google can't get more phones out, though.
The article is overloaded with gonna and might and could be and by end of x date. And then of course the not subtle money revs. Whatever PR firm put together this submarine, made them sound desperate:
"The Los Angeles company says its emergence over the last six years has led" ... "a near-acqusition for as much as $450 million"
"The company is reviewing a previously undisclosed acquisition offer, but discussions are continuing about potentially going public next year."
"A near-bankrupt FreedomPop was hours away from selling to Sprint in 2015 when a new $30-million investment came in from venture capitalists. Stokols isn’t in a cash crunch this time around."
"Investors are equivocal about when to sell, saying that they’ll weigh any offers, like the one on the table now, but that they generally want to see the company remain independent for some time."
"If they hold out, investors could turn into potential acquirers." (har har, nice fake spin by the PR firm on trying to project power)
So what you're really saying is: you want to sell (soon!), you're going to hit a money crunch because the business has no margin and it's very expensive to compete (but we could IPO any minute now, so you better buy us first), your investors are worried (we like putting more money into a red ink machine that nearly went under before), you're fake-touting strength when you're actually not in that position at all (we might buy the entire telecom industry!), and everything you might accomplish is forecast to x date into the future (when you hope to have already sold, so the cash burning 'business' is a problem for someone else).
Want to know what this really is? History rhymes. It's PeoplePC from the dotcom bubble.
I think there is a big market for people that want to pay $5-$15/mo for a small data only plan for people that will use Wifi on their phone 90% of the time but want to use mobile data just occasionally. Most of the major plans start way over that.
I see they're selling data-only SIMs for phones. Is that new? I thought Apple & Google insisted phones must have plan with a phone line. (If its good I think I'll go back to data only (with Google Voice))
No, Google Voice predates Google Hangouts.
> Google Voice just used to use data to set up a PSTN call. Has something changed?
Google Voice did not originally support data only calling(VOIP) like I said read the comment above me. He is supporting what I was saying.
> Yes. About 4 years ago they integrated full VoIP calling into something they call the Hangouts Dialer. Outbound works well, although I often have to initiate a call twice due to setup connectivity weirdness on LTE. Inbound basically never works, so I leave the PSTN forwarding on for that reason.
I have been on Google Voice for a fairly long time. Google Voice used to only supports PSTN calling although it uses data to trigger the call.
I'm not sure why you think Google or Apple can dictate terms to operators who do not even sell their phones.
Data-only SIM's are quite common, they are used in tablets, 4G USB-sticks for laptops, portable 4G-wifi routers, etc.
I wonder if the major carriers track and log web browsing history of their own customers as well? And if we can opt out...
https://tor.stackexchange.com/questions/8/how-does-tor-route...
Verizon has been adding headers for tracking for some time (probably via Blue Coat ProxySG forward proxy or similar technology) https://www.verizonwireless.com/support/unique-identifier-he...
T-Mobile, for example even monitors and freaking blocks your usage to certain sites when on airplane mode and on wifi - even when you have wifi assist disabled.
Further, they even deduct from you data usage wifi use!
It's provable! I've proved it and T-Mobile Philippines call center says "oops let me reset your data plan" when called on it.
I proved it by only being in airplane mode and used wifi calling, and seeing that data was being deducted from my account when I wasn't using cell data.
If you have a plan that doesn't offer unlimited calling, calls made over Wi-Fi Calling count against your plan minutes. For Pay In Advance prepaid lines, calls made over Wi-Fi deduct from the plan bucket just like regular calls.
But the problem was I ran into barriers for byop. The 1st phone was a verizon phone, which, while unlocked, they disabled access to configure APN settings.
The second phone was a net10 android one phone. When I called them, they said they couldn't technically unlock the phone and the best they could do would be to send me $5 dollars for it.
If Freedompop has a couple million customers, chances are that 95+% are not calls only involving 2 Freedompop customers... So 95+% of Freedompop customers' calls are likely monitored and recorded by Sprint or AT&T. This is scary.
"FreedomPop collects data about users’ backgrounds and phone habits."
The trick here is to realize that they are basically a scam company and treat them as such. I used a temporary credit card number to prevent any unwanted charges. As long as they're willing to give me a backup LTE connection for free, I'm willing to take it. When they inevitably implode, oh well.
I think I'm paying something like CAD$40/month for this level of service in Canada.
If you don't pay for the product, YOU are the product.
They don't give you a real phone number, just some app you need to use to call.
Avoid them.
Edit: Is it how hacker news community is? downvoting because I tell the truth how their service is? I had the experience of getting charged for months without warning. They use your credit card, instead of direct debit in the UK so even more annoying for cancelling. And no requiring customer to read every details of your contract is not fair. Fair is an important part of any contract, finding you are getting a VoIP number is not normal.
While sketchy, it is actually free after the "activation fee" etc.
There was also ring+ which shut down, pay a few hundred up front for 5GB data "for life" + a real non VoIP phone number.
All in all unless you can't afford cell service at all, it really isn't worth the hassle (no real phone number, just VoIP so it gets rejected for verification).
A lot of ultra-low budget phone plans are like this (TextNow for example)
It seems to work just fine. It is strange that its not a real phone number, only a VOIP style app - but it still works with iMessage and WhatsApp, and they can make and receive calls in a pinch.
Can you send / receive text messages to short codes?
look at the specific bands that your phone supports. there is no other way of knowing. a good amount of phones are CDMA and GSM. if your phone is carrier locked, you will also need to find a way of undoing that.
I have one in a spare Verizon note 4 - it gets h+ networking rather than 4g, but its useable.
(I suppose a corollary: in the negative if grammatically appropriate)
Now they stopped giving that free service, and you have to pay. I don't think many people will pay anything. It's a scam.
I received an email regarding this this morning.
The advantage is that the new cards are pretty much plain Masmovil simcards, so calls and SMS go over GSM directly and 4G works at decent speed over the Orange network.
But if you look at the whiteboard behind the CEO on the picture on the article, they were intelligent enough to leave written on it things about their roadmap like "Blocking SMS" or "Masmovil = ?appnet? calls + SMS" which leads to think that they will migrate both to their app in the future.
At least they also have "holiday" written on the whiteboard, so probably they also thought about how bad of an idea is to do all of this on summer holidays.