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It's so ridiculously easy to start an MVNO now-a-days, someone here should start a Hacker News cell company that guarantees to be open and not do a bunch of bul
by seibelj 10y ago
It's so ridiculously easy to start an MVNO now-a-days, someone here should start a Hacker News cell company that guarantees to be open and not do a bunch of bullshit with your data. You only need ~100k subs to be profitable, with all this privacy news lately I bet you can hit it with the privacy conscience consumer
- imglorp 10y agoHow would an MVNO prevent its upstream provider from doing bullshit on the data? It seems like each provider in the path to the backbone has the opportunity, means, and motivation.
- seibelj 10y agoVPN? Sign a contract with one of the providers to not track the data? Start thinking like an entrepreneur! There is an unmet need, go meet the need and work through the problems.
- gm-conspiracy 10y ago...or point-to-point IP connection, so the device count not reach the general internet, just your white-listed endpoint? I just want a pipe.
- joecool1029 10y ago> I just want a pipe. Mobile providers don't work like that though. Even when roaming international, there is a tunnel back to your home provider. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPRS_Tunnelling_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPRS_Tunnelling_Protocol
- dylz 10y agoThis is amusing because you can get unfiltered internet roaming in China if you bring a foreign sim, apparently
- joecool1029 10y agoDepends on the type of MVNO. Branded resellers really can't do shit to stop their parent provider from doing bullshit, but Comcast is likely going to fall into the Full MVNO category and tunnel all the traffic into their network: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_virtual_network_operator#Types https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_virtual_network_operato...
- seanmccann 10y agoAs a MVNO, it'd still be on a network operated by one of the big 4.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- rickdale 10y agoMVNO = mobile virtual network operator. My biggest pet peeve when talking about technology is not referencing the full name of something you are going to abbreviate as if everyone knows it. The article makes no mention of MVNO so reading your comment I had to google search what exactly you were talking about. A lot of coding books and developers tend to do this and its always bothered the heck out of me. edit: Can someone explain the dv? So people are in favor of random abbreviations?
- matt_wulfeck 10y agoMost of us are intelligent enough to google words we don't know. No reason to bring your personal pet peeves into an unrelated discussion.
- rickdale 10y agoI did google it, thats not the point. It wasn't a "word" I didn't know, it was an abbreviation of a topic that was the main source of the top comment (at the time).
- seibelj 10y agoYou googled it and learned what it was, now you know what it means and probably a lot more. If you want to learn stuff yourself you should be prepared to research. You are on a technology website reading an article about telecom, if you want to participate in the comments a baseline level of understanding isn't a big ask.
- rickdale 10y agoif you want to participate in the comments a baseline level of understanding isn't a big ask. Thats not fair. I came to the comments after reading the article to learn more about the article. I think its considered poor quality to make a comment like ADF is the worst. Without referecing what ADF is first, or without being referenced in the article.
- 10y ago
- stanleydrew 10y agoI started an MVNO called Charge (https://charge.co https://charge.co). It's not as easy as you think to hit 100K subs.
- estro 10y agoThis is awesome! I had no idea services like this existed. Thank you for sharing.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- rb808 10y agoThat looks great, I haven't seen a data only plan that works with phones - I thought Google and Apple banned that. Its kinda hard to compete with the tmobile $30 plan, I might use this though.
- compsciphd 10y agot-mobile's $30 walmart plan no longer exists (i.e. if you have it you have it, but no one new can get it)
- OrwellianChild 10y agoThis is fascinating! Are you willing to share some of the cost structure for buying Sprint bandwidth? Are there large fixed costs to cover, or is it more pay-as-you-go?
- Dylan16807 10y ago> You only need ~100k subs to be profitable While providing unlimited data? MVNOs seem to generally charge $10/GB, and I assume there's a reason for that.
- mikeash 10y agoNobody provides actual unlimited data. Lots of providers have stopped charging overages, but they still throttle you terribly once you pass their soft cap.
- Dylan16807 10y agoWhile that's true, the throttle mark is usually between 20GB and 30GB. That's a lot better than getting 4GB for the money.
- mikeash 10y agoGood point, even fake "unlimited" at this price seems like it wouldn't be feasible. Elsewhere it's mentioned that they'll take advantage of their xfinitywifi hotspots. Maybe that's enough to bring their cellular traffic down to a level that this would pay for.
- joecool1029 10y ago>It's so ridiculously easy to start an MVNO now-a-days Reseller you mean. Example: I have spoken to the Harbor Mobile founders and they figured out a loophole in signing up regular T-Mobile customers to the business plans. It allowed them to offer plans ~20% off typical postpaid rates, and all they had to handle was billing. They started things with a simple Wix site. T-Mobile has since blocked them from signing up anyone new to this type of plan, likely because the plans got quite popular on deal forums.