Verizon offers iPad/MiFi Bundle on October 28, 1GB/mo for $20 no contract | Hacker News Reader

mo for $20 no contract

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36 pointsnirmal52 comments

My wife had a MiFi for her Macbook, until she went to visit her family in Canada for a weekend. As far as we can tell, the Macbook decided to update itself in the hotel while she was out and had left the MiFi on. With the indicator light design on the MiFi it's not simple to tell the difference between "I'm charging" and "I'm eating up all of your allowed bandwidth at roaming rates". The result was an almost $900 bill for data roaming charges. I don't think we even exceeded her 2GB/month allowance, at least not by much.

Apparently, in Verizon's view, Canada is such a technologically backward nation that it costs an order of magnitude more to send data over their maple-syrup-soaked drunken-beaver-operated telecommunications system than it does here in the US.

There was no recourse; Verizon doesn't care why the bandwidth was used, even if it was unintentional. We canceled the contract.

EDIT: Contrasting point: for my Android, Verizon gives me unlimited data for $45/month. I use at least 1GB/month, and that's without watching videos or doing any other data-intensive stuff that I'd probably want to do on an iPad. (I don't pay the extra $20/month they want for tethering. I've found the Android is sufficient for my mobile computing needs.)

Due to the ease of unintentionally spending so much so fast, it seems like the US should have consumer protection laws in place that the mobile phone companies should at least be mandated to text or call you and let you know when you've gone $100 over your monthly bill.

from earlier today:

"The decision was the first step in a months-long process at the FCC that will ultimately result in another vote on whether carriers should be forced to alert consumers when they near their allotted limits for voice, text and data services. Carriers would be told through text and voice alerts before reaching their limits and they would be similarly warned when their carrier charges the user for international roaming fees."

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/posttech/2010/10/fcc_votes_...

That's great and I fully support it, but in my case it wouldn't have done a damn thing to help. The MiFi has its own phone number which is separate from any other accounts you have with verizon. While it can accept text messages the only way to see them is to tether the MiFi to a computer and run the verizon connection manager which has a non-default tab where you can view and send texts. An email also wouldn't have helped because my wife was attending a wedding while her computer was downloading stuff back at the hotel, so by the time she saw the email it would have been too late.

My situation wasn't a gradual build-up of data charges over a month; the entire $900 worth of charges were incurred in just a few hours while the computer was unattended. The law should cause carriers to terminate service when the limit is reached, and only allow the limit to be exceeded if the customer explicitly requests it and authorizes the charges. This is especially true for a device like the MiFi, in our modern world of automatic updates, syncronization, and applications that phone home regularly for all sorts of reasons.

We were just in Canada in early September. As soon as we crossed the border, AT&T send me a warning-text saying, "you're roaming now, data is $15/mb, so heads up." (Obviously paraphrased, but the number is real.)

However, it was still hard to know when we were and weren't using data. There are options in the iPhone to turn cellular data on/off (which needs to be on to use GPS), and not to allow data roaming, but I still was unsure of when it was being used.

Our bill ended up being $217 for the month. It could have went much worse.

You can turn cellular data off on the iPhone and still use the GPS. Airplane mode, however, will shut off the GPS. What really kills you is that visual voicemail runs over the data network, and it's non-trivial to turn that off. I spent last month backpacking through Europe with my iPhone, using GPS every day, without unexpected charges by leaving data off. A friend of mine on the other hand turned data on for 5 minutes to check his email for a phone number. That triggered 10mb voicemail download and a nearly $200 bill for the month.

Yes - Every time I turn on Roaming Data with my iPhone in Vancouver, I do the mental calculation of "Is this thing that I'm about to do really worth $15/Megabyte". $900 would have been around 60 Megabytes of downloads.

Whenever I'm traveling in Canada for more than a couple days, I usually go pick up a local data plan and device.

Verizon is often acting like an evil megacorp, but in this case I'd say it's all your wife fault. The roaming rates are in the contract. Canadian telecoms may be charging Verizon a lot to use their networks.

The roaming rates were not in the contract or anything else she was shown or told at the verizon store when she bought the device. And, she bought it specifically for use in Canada when she's visiting her family, so she did ask if it would work there.

I eventually found the rates buried on the verizon website several clicks deep through greyed out deemphasized links in the mifi data plan options. They're not available anywhere in her account information. They're also displayed in a hard-to-read run-on sentence style that mixes all countries together, not an easy to understand table. Verizon is clearly trying to hide this information in order to trick users into huge charges.

So she was expecting Verizon to take care of her interests. She bought the device for use in Canada and didn't even ask for the price.

http://www.google.com/search?q=verizon+data+roaming+canada+r...

When the said contract is over 25 pages long with legalese as the only language how can you expect anyone to know what they're saying? And cell companies know that if they make these terms unintelligible, they make more money.

How? With a little bit of effort. Spend 5 min. reading online reviews of the service before singing. Check the roaming rates before going to Canada, it takes 1 min. to find and read http://b2b.vzw.com/international/naroaming.htm

The EU has a 65$ cap past your standard bill. So you don't get bill shock over there. Instead, you get a message that states you are this close or exceeded the "loan".

Here phone companies literally give someone unlimited credit to hang themselves. Add that to 45 day period before you know about the bill. Yeah, its stacked against you.

Usually if you call your carrier and whine for an extended period they will cancel your first "offense."

"Canada is such a technologically backward nation that it costs an order of magnitude more to send data over their maple-syrup-soaked drunken-beaver-operated telecommunications system than it does here in the US."

This is so true!!!

1GB per month for $20? What is this, 2001?

Of course, you just know all the Dogberts at Verizon are wagging their tails over collecting those juicy overage fees.

why is wireless data so bloody expensive? what are verizons margins on $20/1GB?

Per wikipedia://GSM…

GSM has used a variety of voice codecs to squeeze 3.1 kHz audio into between 6.5 and 13 kbit/s.

So that is between 100k and 200k bytes per minute of speech. That gigabyte is the same radio load as 10000 minutes of talk time.

Where does one get 10000 minutes of talk time for only $20?

I think the question is Why is wireless voice so bloody expensive‽

Obviously this doesn't even begin to explain it, but the realtime/quality-of-service requirements of voice are much more rigid, so it makes sense that voice would cost the carrier more per-bit than data. But still...

(Pedantic) Verizon uses CDMA, not GSM, but the question is still a fair one. I wonder how the numbers change for CDMA, if at all.

Wikipedia says CDMA uses 3 rates, 8.5kbps, 4kbps, and 0.8kbs at the sender's choosing. It averages about 6kbps, so the numbers are about the same. There are improved codecs, but I can't tell if they are in use.

The 0.8kbps is just for encoding background noise when the person is not talking.

That's called "monopoly rent". Normally competition drives prices down, but wireless data provision is an expensive and legally difficult business to get into.

Is anybody selling 3G data for appreciably less? AT&T iPad rates are $15 for 250MB, $25 for 2GB.

In the UK, on a non contract pay as you go service, I give T-Mobile £20 once every 6 months, and in exchange for that, they give me 1GB of 3G data per month.

Just be glad you guys don't live in Canada (at least not when it comes to wireless data ;). One of the larger providers up here, Telus, charges $30/month for 500mb and $65/mo for 5 gigs... and that's all ON TOP of whatever your actual wireless plan is. Yick.

About $20/GB.

do share holders have any right to know the actual figure?

Unless you've got a board seat, probably not. You get what's in their public disclosure for investors and that's about it.

You can get the same MiFi 2200 device from Virgin Mobile (my local BestBuy carries them) which uses Sprint's 3G network for $40/month unlimited bandwidth and no contract. I bought one last month for a road trip and love it.

I have the Virgin MiFi in NYC, and the service here is terrible.

The connection from the MiFi to 3G drops every 20 minutes or so, and the connection from the iPad/MacBook to the MiFi drops 2-3 times a day. The latter means I need to reboot the device and re-enter my admin details 2-3 times a day. When it does work, the connection is so slow I cannot watch YouTube videos or stay connected to any chat service. The badness seems tied to the time of day. I can sometimes get stuff done early in the morning on Saturday and Sunday. Any other time of the week it's mostly unusable.

If the MiFi still seems like a good deal to you (maybe it works fine outside of NYC), please contact me in my profile, I'll sell you mine for 50 bucks.

That is a good deal.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Virgin+Mobile+-+MiFi+2200+Wirele...

Wow. I, too, own a Virgin Mobile MiFi 2200 (also purchased from BestBuy).

http://www.virginmobileusa.com/mobile-broadband/

I purchased a unit about 4 months ago. Thank you scottw for the info.

When I purchased the unit, there was no umlimited option. The most you could purchase was 5GB at a time. If you did not use all 5GB, tough luck, it would not rollover, expiring after 30 days.

So, $40/month, unlimited is quite impressive WITH NO CONTRACT.

Also the Mifi 2200 supports multiple devices simultaneously, so you can use your iPad and your girlfriend can use her MBP.

Rather interesting, considering Verizon charges an additional monthly fee for their smartphones to bridge via wifi (even if you already pay for a smartphone data plan).

This is also one of the few devices/services that can provide internet access using only cash (no cc associated with the account).

I highly recommend the Mifi2200.

Have you found it shuts down periodically? I was tethered to it all day yesterday (plugged in to the wall and not plugged in), and about halfway through the day it started disconnecting from the WWAN every 30 minutes or so. The "Connect" button in the Web UI didn't reconnect, but powering off and back on fixed it every time.

I wonder if I got a bum hardware or if there's something else going on.

I had the Sprint version last year and it did the exact same thing. I figured it was overheating or something.

Honestly, I have not used it with unlimited mode. I was using the 5GB/month, so I paced myself (never more than 3 hours).

I did notice it does run hot, though. Maybe change the orientation of the MiFi.

I haven't checked for firmware updates, either.

Sorry I couldn't be more helpful.

I didn't know anyone was still offerring unlimited 3G data. Probably will be fading away soon like AT&T and Verizon's unlimited plans.

It has only become unlimited recently. It was capped at 5GB/month.

I am still in shock.

Heh. They're out of stock. Go figure.

http://www.virginmobileusa.com/mobile-broadband/broadband2go...

That's an awesome deal though. When they come available again, I'm jumping on that.

Like the grandparent said, BestBuy has them. I asked them specifically on Twitter and they responded:

> Your best bet to purchase a MiFi right now would be going to one of our retailers- @BestBuy, @RadioShack, @Target

I went to BestBuy and walked out with one. And, unlike my experiences trying to set my iPad up on AT&T, it lets you set up the MiFi even if you don't have any other source of internet access.

I'm not entirely overjoyed with the speeds, but the $40 for unlimited with no contract (they explicitly say you can sign up when you need it, cancel when you don't) is a good price.

So they're tacking on $130 to the price of the iPad to cover the device? I like my setup much better ...

I have the iPad WiFi coupled with Virgin's MiFi which is $150 + $40/mo for unlimited bandwidth (on Sprint's network). No worries about overages, works great everywhere I've been and you don't even pay for months you don't use it.

Most Best Buy stores have them. http://www.virginmobileusa.com/mobile-broadband/mifi-2200.ht...

The bundle is costing about $130 more than the iPad, plus whatever sliver of profit they get on the iPad wholesale. No risk taken by Verizon, no need for a contract.

I have an iPad and a MiFi from 3 and it's a good combination for occasional 3G access (most of the locations I use my iPad at have WiFi).

The MiFi with 8GB PAYG was about £70 whereas a 3G capable iPad is £100 more than the WiFi models here in the UK - also means I can have other devices (laptops/ipod) on the MiFi when required.

[Edit: I would never get a MiFi on contract - PAYG works fine with no risk of silly bills]

Yes but the £100 is a one off cost.

The £70 for the MiFi is a one off cost - you still have to pay for the data in both cases.

Verizon working with Apple: Does this just validate all those rumors of an iPhone next month on Verizon?

I think it's safe to assume that. It shows that Apple and Verizon don't have as terrible a blood feud as some had thought. In fact, the offer looks somewhat... desperate. It's blatantly anti-consumer (lug around a MiFi and pay for the privilege!) in comparison to the AT&T offering. I wonder if it's not part of some contractual agreement from Apple: "Alright, we'll give you the iPhone, but we want iPads in Verizon stores this holiday season, and [we don't have the CDMA chips ready yet/don't want to announce we have CDMA chips yet]. What are you going to do?"

It's hardly anti-consumer. For the price of a 3G iPad, you get an equivalent Wi-Fi only iPad and a MiFi that all your other devices can use. I would have bought this in a heartbeat over my 3G if it had been available in April.

It's hard to sell a portability argument when you are tied to a dongle, even if it is small. That's a workaround for the network, not the consumer.

Was this option not available? It seems like the only convenience is the bundling here, or were Mifis never without contract before?

I'm pretty sure Verizon's MiFi is contract only (and $60 for 5GB data). Virgin's just recently became unlimited, but I /think/ it's always been contract-free, it just used to be 5GB.

Virgin's got a public awareness problem (at least among the people I know), however, so for most people I bet the only known options were from Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, etc.

IIRC you could buy a no-contract MiFi but it was much more expensive.

It's especially interesting as we're now hearing rumors of AT&T's relationship with Apple souring a bit.

".. MiFi 2200 is small enough to fit in a pocket and allows customers to create a personal Wi-Fi cloud capable of sharing the high-speed Internet .. "

Wait, what?

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