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Michael
Site Admin
Joined: 13 Jan 2005
Posts: 5045
Location: Cary, IL
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 Posted: Wed Oct 04, 2006 10:51 am Post subject: Helio Offers EVDO Card, $85/month |
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Helio is a reseller of Sprint (MNVO) service and they have announced a PCMCIA EVDO Rev 0 card. This card is based on the AirCard 580, but also adds Wi-Fi. The card is free, BUT requires a 2 year contract at $85/month.
Here are the terms of service (TOS):
| Quote: | CHAPTER 10: UNLIMITED DOES NOT MEAN UNREASONABLE
Helio unlimited data service plans may be used for the following purposes: (i) Internet browsing; (ii) e-mail; and (iii) intranet access (including access to corporate intranets, e-mail and individual productivity applications like customer relationship management, sales force and field service automation if available). HELIO UNLIMITED DATA PLANS CANNOT BE USED WITH SERVER DEVICES, HOST COMPUTER APPLICATIONS OR OTHER SYSTEMS THAT DRIVE CONTINUOUS HEAVY TRAFFIC OR DATA SESSIONS. EXAMPLES OF SUCH PROHIBITED USES INCLUDE, WITHOUT LIMITATION, WEB CAMERA POSTS OR BROADCASTS, CONTINUOUS JPEG FILE TRANSFERS, AUTOMATIC DATA FEEDS, TELEMETRY APPLICATIONS, AUTOMATED FUNCTIONS OR ANY OTHER MACHINE-TO-MACHINE APPLICATIONS. ALL USE OF WIRELESS DATA SERVICE IS SUBJECT TO USE RESTRICTIONS AS SET FORTH IN THE HELIO ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY. Such data sessions cannot be used as a substitute for private lines or frame relay connections. We reserve the right to deny or terminate service, without notice, to anyone who uses Helio service in any manner prohibited above or whose usage as determined by Helio is excessive or abusive that detrimentally impacts our service or network. Generally, excessive or abusive usage is characterized by monthly data usage of 160 megabytes or more. |
WOW, 160 megabytes a month isn't really that much.
Seems like the incredibly low data usage, and an older card, doesn't make this a great deal.
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xenophon
EVDO Addict
Joined: 30 Aug 2005
Posts: 1969
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| Posted: Wed Oct 04, 2006 11:56 am Post subject: |
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| Overpriced, old technology and limited TOS. A real winner. |
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jackrodgers
EVDO Addict
Joined: 23 Mar 2006
Posts: 1131
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| Posted: Wed Oct 04, 2006 12:10 pm Post subject: Re: Helio Offers EVDO Card, $85/month |
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| Michael wrote: | | Helio is a reseller of Sprint (MNVO) service and they have announced a PCMCIA EVDO Rev 0 card. This card is based on the AirCard 580, but also adds Wi-Fi. The card is free, BUT requires a 2 year contract at $85/month. |
Kinda dumb to buy service from a RE-seller. |
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Michael
Site Admin
Joined: 13 Jan 2005
Posts: 5045
Location: Cary, IL
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SL10
EVDO Junkie
Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 394
Location: Denver, Colorado
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| Posted: Wed Oct 04, 2006 10:39 pm Post subject: |
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Helio, back away from the crack pipe. lmao. Well, I see another MVNO failing soon?
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jschurawlow
EVDO User
Joined: 06 Sep 2006
Posts: 69
Location: Pennsylvania
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| Posted: Wed Oct 04, 2006 11:40 pm Post subject: |
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85 bucks a month for 160MB data  don't make me laugh.
One phrase comes to mind right about now "often imitated never duplicated" Guess we got ourselves a competitor for Verizon's catch22 TOS (only worse this time). |
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Feefer
EVDO User
Joined: 30 Aug 2005
Posts: 71
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| Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2006 2:09 pm Post subject: |
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Is this a puppet company, subsisized by one of the bigger companies, just so they can point to it as an example and say, "see, our TOS and value/pricing aren't so bad after all...." 
Chris |
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xenophon
EVDO Addict
Joined: 30 Aug 2005
Posts: 1969
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| Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2006 2:53 pm Post subject: |
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| I wonder if the 160MB/month limit was intended to be 160MB/day? That's inline with Verizon's apparent 5GB/month, which comes to an average 166MB/day. |
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jackrodgers
EVDO Addict
Joined: 23 Mar 2006
Posts: 1131
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| Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2006 3:42 pm Post subject: |
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I couldn't find the TOS to check but at http://www.helio.com/page?p=devices_hybrid I noticed that they are trying to pitch it as a hybrid of wifi and EVDO...but if you look at the hardware required you need you or wifi card... 
The site is extreme eye candy. |
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Ben Miller
EVDO Heavy User
Joined: 14 Aug 2006
Posts: 112
Location: Los Angeles
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| Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2006 4:03 pm Post subject: |
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| Excellent point, xenophon. I tend to doubt that they are being that generous but you may have hit on it exactly. |
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hi-def
EVDO Newbie
Joined: 05 Oct 2006
Posts: 1
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| Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2006 5:14 pm Post subject: |
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Michael, you jumped the gun.
The terms of service you are reading is for Helio phones not aicards. I wonder if they accidentally posted that under the aircard acceptable use policy by mistake? |
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Alex
Site Admin
Joined: 19 Sep 2006
Posts: 1945
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| Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2006 8:24 pm Post subject: |
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| hi-def wrote: | Michael, you jumped the gun.
The terms of service you are reading is for Helio phones not aicards... |
What makes you say that?
the first line of chapter10 of POS/TOS clearly says:
"Helio unlimited data service plans..."
so i'm not sure i follow your logic. |
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celluphonechick
EVDO Newbie
Joined: 05 Oct 2006
Posts: 2
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| Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2006 10:18 pm Post subject: |
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Hi-def is right.
Guys, it may have been better to check with Helio first before you started this thread?? Your info has spread all over the web and I feel kind'a bad for the small company. They are just starting out and you guys are so critical of them already. We've been around for a while now and we still make big mistakes as a network operator! 
Anyways, I'm sure Helio appreciated the mistake. I work for Sprint's data center and I know Helio has not publicly stated any threshold for its data services yet and we have not capped them yet. I'm sure if they signed up hundreds of thousands of users with this 3G card and it started to affect our network performance, then things might be different.
There are many areas of the country where our network is weak and we know it. So far, Helio is small and doesn't pose a huge capacity threat to us yet in those areas. Maybe one day though. |
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celluphonechick
EVDO Newbie
Joined: 05 Oct 2006
Posts: 2
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| Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2006 10:32 pm Post subject: |
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| xenophon wrote: | | I wonder if the 160MB/month limit was intended to be 160MB/day? That's inline with Verizon's apparent 5GB/month, which comes to an average 166MB/day. |
We (Sprint) will be the ones capping usage should we decide to as we are Helio's network operator.
So far, we haven't imposed these restrictions on Helio.
Sometimes I wish we'd cap usage on some users. Some areas of the country have certain power users who literally affect network performance for others. SMS, EVDO outages happen when data performance is not regulated. At any given moment, we honestly have hundreds of small outages all over the nation and some of them are atributed to network overload.
Fortunately, for us, many unlimited data users use less than 2 GB per month. We always try to be the data good-guy maverick in the industry but sometimes it bites us in the @zz. Love those wake up calls on Saturday at 2am when we have those outages! LOL
Last edited by celluphonechick on Thu Oct 05, 2006 10:38 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Alex
Site Admin
Joined: 19 Sep 2006
Posts: 1945
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| Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2006 10:33 pm Post subject: |
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| celluphonechick wrote: | Hi-def is right.
Guys, it may have been better to check with Helio first... |
looking up their published/public TOS, was my way of checking with helio.
if you've managed to speak to someone at helio who contradicts our findings, that doesn't surprise me. think about it. they make a stupid policy that blows up in their face, so naturally they say its not true.
my problem with this is, lets say it were to go to court. the fact that the published TOS *could* be construed as applying to data services, works in their favor. its all left up to interpretation.
verizon doesn't even have a posted TOS that states 5gb cap anywhere (that i, or cringely could find) but a lot of people will tell you, that policy must exist somewhere.
helio's TOS is in plain sight, and deny it as they may, their lawyers would use it to their advantage, not to any user's.
i'd still like to see a helio higher-up or official of some sort, point to some public URL that disputes the TOS we found, in any way that could give a user hope. i'm sure if they could do that, we'd retract.
our thread isn't about bashing the little guy. we're little guys too. its about warning folks that what they think they might get because its called "unlimited", might not be what they were hoping for. |
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