“Something is fundamentally broken in the market for mobile providers,” says Robert Gaal, one of the founders of Karma, a startup that just graduated from the TechStars NY accelerator program. “We want to give everyone a mobile, 4G hotspot that lives in their pocket. It’s open to everyone, and lets you pay as you go. Best of all it works no matter what carrier or what device you’re using.” The Karma hotspot costs $69 and is powered by Clearwire’s network, which provides WiMax 4G service in 80 major US cities. Users pay $14 per gigabyte of data they use, with no monthly fee or minimums. The twist is that Karma makes your hotspot into an open Wi-Fi network. When a new user joins, they are taken to a personalized page about the owner of the hotspot. Strangers can then sign in with their Facebook account and get 100MB of free browsing. For every user who does that, the owner of Karma gets 100MB of free data credited to his account. The company calls this “social telecom.” (via Karma: a 4G provider that rewards users for sharing their data plan with strangers | The Verge)
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