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Purism's AweSIM – monthly plan for Librem5 including unlimited data
- lol768 6y ago99 USD a month?! I pay 18.80 GBP a month for this.
- alexktz 6y agoComparing a dense urbanized island to the vastness of the US isn't really a fair comparison. I'm not suggesting that $99 isn't too much, just that to expect price parity when the average subscribers per square mile is vastly different isn't realistic.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y agoIt's running on existing T-mobile or ATT networks (MVNO), so they're not competing on building towers or anything. https://www.t-mobile.com/cell-phone-plans https://www.t-mobile.com/cell-phone-plans claims that tmo will give you unlimited everything for $70/mo for a single line. So what's Purism giving you? EDIT: rereading it, it looks like the extra cost is giving you some privacy benefits and helping fund them.
- monksy 6y agoI paid $8 USD a month for 62gb a month and 600 minutes of international calling. (It was in a country of >1billion people)
- boogies 6y agoYou pay 18.80 GBP for > A phone number registered & operated under Purism > Help fund additional developmental services offered from Purism ? I don’t think anyone’s arguing that everyone wants this, but I think it (including “privacy as a service” as part of point №1) is ⅔ of the value proposition.
- akerro 6y agoSo the remaining $74.75 covers not tracking you and supporting opensource hardware.
- blendergeek 6y agoAnd open source software.
- everdrive 6y agoWhich is why there are so few privacy-conscious options in the market. People won't pay for them.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- trewtip 6y agoYou pay GBP for service in the US?
- lol768 6y agoYes technically, my plan includes roaming ;)
- smnrchrds 6y agoSo what? 99 USD in Canada will buy you 50GB of data and unlimited calls to Canadian numbers only. Why are you judging a US phone plan based on how it compares to UK plans?
- bmsleight_ 6y agoOut of interest which provider in the UK ?
- lol768 6y agoThree.
- pixxel 6y ago$99 a month. I had to read the page twice to check that the phone itself is included. It’s not.
- microcolonel 6y agoIf I could do dual-SIM on one account for 99 bucks and get both AT&T and T-Mobile backends, that would be killer. The only thing more killer than that would be swapping one of them for Verizon.
- DenisM 6y agoYou can do all of that on a recent iPhone.
- zeveb 6y agoBut then you'd be stuck with an iPhone, not running Linux, unable to develop, run and share free software.
- twiclo 6y agoYou're not going to convince anyone interested in a librem to get an iphone
- DenisM 6y agoRight, I spaced out for a moment and forgot the topic. Doh.
- hackmiester 6y agoI think that's an oversimplification. The iPhone was the closest practical alternative, last time I purchased a phone.
- alpaca128 6y agoI don't see how the iPhone is as good in terms of privacy as Sailfish OS or Android without Google apps.
- 188201 6y agoThe UI layer is closed source in Sailfish OS, so not better than iPhone in this case. For Android, if getting a Lineage OS in phone, the first problem is Lineage OS still does not have automatic update without manually reboot into recovery mode, and need for user invention. Let's be honest I don't bother to update because of requiring human intervention in update until I find the time to do it. Not a good practice but hey... Secondly, any phone could be dropped support by Lineage OS if the developer of that model just starts using another phone and cannot find another to continue supporting the phone. The best option for privacy seems to be using GrapheneOS with Pixel phones, but GrapheneOS only supports as long as the support cycle of a pixel phone, so it is 3 years before end-of-life minus the time to develop GrapheneOS ROM for a new pixel phone. If you are going to value your privacy so much then this is the best, but a quite expensive route and not really environmental friendly. An iPhone can receive update as long as Apple the company is not bankrupted. Well, you get a worse performance after update but at least it is an option to continue to use.
- obenn 6y agoDoes this include a lease of a phone unit?
- codezero 6y agolooks like no: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24654665 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24654665
- jdofaz 6y agoThey don't provide enough information on that page to justify the price IMHO.
- obenn 6y agoThe premise of essentially proxying customers into a major carrier in aggregate to preserve privacy is an interesting one. I use such a service for home internet in Ottawa, Canada (https://ncf.ca https://ncf.ca) and it’s been working great - with much better customer service.
- aDfbrtVt 6y agoAs an aside, I really hope NCF gets access to Bell Fiber!
- 0rjf83 6y agoFrom their last major newsletter they are planning cable service rollout eventually, probably on Rogers. It's active in some low-income housing already I think. The stopper for Bell Fiber FTTH is Bell blocking resale of service on their pure fiber lines to 3rd parties. I don't remember any specific dates but the CRTC is bound to hopefully force their hand one day. I am too hoping they one day offer it, I love NCF.
- voiper1 6y agoIn the USA, of you want to use all the features, the IRS and many banks _require_ an cell phone registered in your name to prove your ID. Assumedly, this number will not work for that... EDIT:Bi previously said that the irs required you to have a phone in your name. That was incorrect. I meant to refer to the full secure online access: You can verify by phone or mail, and they disabled mail option during covid a while ago. https://www.irs.gov/individuals/secure-access-how-to-register-for-certain-online-self-help-tools#activation https://www.irs.gov/individuals/secure-access-how-to-registe...
- RandomBacon 6y ago> the IRS and many banks _require_ an cell phone registered in your name to prove your ID. That has not been my experience with the IRS and my banks.
- morpheuskafka 6y ago
- compsciphd 6y agowe pay anywhere between $64-$80 a month (depending how many lines use over 2GB of data) for 3 lines of service on t-mobile that are unlimited all 3 ways (with the normal deprioritization that probably happens with this as well if going over 50GB a month, which we don't). basically, I don't buy the significant value in their privacy mode (perhaps it has value to others, but not so much to me). I can see the value in supporting the development of the phone, but its a very significant delta in cost.
- hedora 6y agoWe’re paying $12/line/month + $10/GB over 500MB, but the data never expires. I’ve only had to pay for an extra GB a few times in the last few years, so it’s ~$14/month/line. The sms and voice limits are high enough not to matter.
- hackmiester 6y agoNot being able to port a number to them is kind of a non-starter for me.
- supernova87a 6y agoSo you're considering a privacy-focused phone, but only if you can bring all of your phone number associated baggage and history with you?
- hackmiester 6y agoWhat baggage is associated with a phone number aside from perhaps the occasional nuisance call?
- bubblethink 6y agoIs there anything more to it than a bit of billing indirection ? Hard to see any privacy benefits of that. How is it better than buying a prepaid sim ?
- moojacob 6y agoI appreciate free software and privacy, and it's cool to have a company that genuinely understands both of those. But it hurts that Purism uses their monopoly over their niche to upcharge customers so much. edit: I'm wrong. Didn't know about their financial woes.
- pengaru 6y ago> But it hurts that Purism uses their monopoly over their niche to upcharge customers so much. Monopoly? Purism barely exists as a company. This is just another desperate attempt to get some cash flow, I don't think they've even managed to ship the gen1 phone to all the backers yet.
- yepthatsreality 6y ago> This is just another desperate attempt to get some cash flow, I don't think they've even managed to ship the gen1 phone to all the backers yet. This is not a desperate attempt, it is another service offering to align with their privacy focused hardware and software products. They have been very open and honest about any delays in the shipping of the phones. Evergreen batches are nearly a month away. So they haven’t “managed” that yet because the process has not completed yet.
- ncmncm 6y agoCorrect, I have not got mine yet. I signed on for their LibremOne family plan, and gave them 18 months to pull it together. They were unable to keep a Matrix homeserver operating correctly. I gave up. I discovered privacytools.io operating services, and recently debian.social. And bought a PinePhone.
- Iolaum 6y agoI too have issues with the quality of their matrix server. For example server errors out if you try to change a room's notification settings (and the request fails).
- 6y ago
- eugeniub 6y agoSorry guys, “privacy as a service” should not cost $1,200 per person per year. Hard pass.
- freeopinion 6y agoI think ~$840 of that is for dialtone, data, texts, etc. The other ~$360 is for PaaS and to be a Purism booster. It's up to you how much of is about being a booster and how much is about PaaS. Perhaps you object more to the $840 than the $360? Did you see the price of the phone? Edit: s/phone/dialtone/
- m463 6y agoThere might be a counter-argument that being identified and tracked also has a dollar amount associated with it. It might be the personalized pricing you get, just because they know your zipcode.
- jdillaaa 6y agoAs a few others have pointed out I'm not sure I buy the privacy argument here (although there is very little to go on on the linked page..) Having your phone radio on at all (even without a SIM, e.g. E911 calls) is inherently privacy violating. If you must have connectivity on the go, any prepaid SIM + always on VPN will do the trick. Use Twilio if you want multiple numbers. $99/mo is ludicrous, even if this actually works, which I have doubts about given the history of purism.
- fabrice_d 6y agoI asked them to elaborate on the privacy angle, and they answered (https://forums.puri.sm/t/announcing-librem-awesim-a-privacy-focused-cellular-service-for-the-librem-5/10418/11?u=fabrice https://forums.puri.sm/t/announcing-librem-awesim-a-privacy-...) that a key point is that the SIM is registered in Purism name instead of the end user one. That would shield you from some id based tracking.
- jdillaaa 6y agoYeah I mean a prepaid SIM + top up with cash is < $30 USD. It just feels like they're taking advantage of people. Although now that I think about it I wonder how they do E911? Sounds like a liability
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- strombofulous 6y agoI worked at best buy many years ago and we had to scan IDs when selling prepaid cards.
- mindfulhack 6y agoIt wouldn't be hard for someone to resell SIMs (even pre-activated SIMs for a premium) to have less data on you recorded at time of said secondary transaction?
- renewiltord 6y agoHow are they doing this? I thought the KYC stuff was necessary for anti-terrorism laws. Am I mistaken and they do that for other reasons?
- gok 6y ago> We register your phone number in our name on your behalf and keep your personal and financial data private and out of the hands of companies who would sell it to others. Presumably they have the information and will respond to a warrant but won't tell the carrier they're MVNO'ing who you are. This isn't that weird; for "work phones" companies often get a pool of SIMs registered to them which they then pass out to employees, and AT&T or whoever doesn't need to know who's in possession of each one at every moment.
- renewiltord 6y agoOh! I didn't know that! I thought work phones also had to comply with KYC at the carrier level. Well, tee eye ell.
- toast0 6y agoThe US doesn't have KYC requirements for phones, only for banking.
- Terretta 6y agoYou can still purchase a cell phone with SIM card for $20 cash, and scratch-off reload cards of prepaid minutes for cash.
- itake 6y ago> unlimited service "limited to United States" I hate it when marketers say one thing, but the contract says the exact opposite.
- m463 6y agoWell it is a US-based company. It's also VAT free :)
- avodonosov 6y agoI don't understand, is this offer worldwide? Difficult to imaging this offer is valid for Belarus. Or that only in San Marino (judging by the .sm domain)?
- caffeinewriter 6y agoDown towards the bottom it seems like it's only presently available in the US, and they're simply using `.sm` as a clever domain name hack/gccTLD (e.g. .io domains, .ly domains, etc)
- shuringai 6y agopretty sure this'd be illegal in the EU where all simcard holders are required to tie the card to their ID documents by law, and there's a yearly checkup on these data
- kefyras 6y agoNo such law exists EU wide.
- gandalfian 6y ago$99 a month?
- joecool1029 6y agoNo technical details in the technical details section. Talks about privacy and then uses the least privacy-respecting carrier: AT&T? Ok cool, so the customer bill says Librem... when this gets piped to the NSA with the location data, I'm sure they can't handle putting a name to it. When it gets sold to location brokers with current location information, I'm sure it won't have the unique phone number tied to it. Might as well wave and put a target on your head saying "please de-anonymize me". No clear definition of where deprioritization limits kick in or how it is to be enforced. Who cares though! The Librem 5 ships with a cat3 LTE modem. That is only just LTE on a single carrier, no LTE Advanced, no carrier aggregation. Forget talking about 5G, we don't even have a modem that supports full 4G operating speeds. Stop hyping something you aren't close to. Now I get it, I'm sounding very harsh but understand that this is a company that's selling a packaged virtue signal (sorta like Virtu used to) and is consistently over-promising and under-delivering. Making phones is hard, making them in the US is next to impossible. I'd rather have a piece of working/shipping Chinesium (Pinephone) for a fifth of the price and use a sim card paid in cash from a prepaid carrier that I can load whatever to it and isn't going to be gone in a year, if I cared to attempt anonymity.
- CKN23-ARIN 6y ago"Text, Calls, and Data are unlimited. Peak data users may be compressed to peak average" What does this mean, exactly? At what point does "compression" kick in, and what does "compression" entail?
- zbrozek 6y agoYeah I had exactly the same question. I'm unable to tell from their page. I tried to follow the flow to buy the SIM to see if more details would pop up, but I eventually got stuck in an infinite loop clicking on "Sign Up Now".
- svnpenn 6y agoVaporware. Indefinitely on preorder, and $2,000: https://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-5-usa https://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-5-usa
- lasagnaphil 6y agoThe normal version (not made in USA) is $750, which is more reasonable. It's not that cheap, but it's still an acceptable tradeoff for getting a full Linux distro on your phone. (Although there is the PinePhone at $149, its performance and hardware/software integration leaves much to be desired.)
- mindfulhack 6y agoThis is probably off-topic but on a very broad level, from a privacy point of view I think it is important to separate 'service provider' (controlling the instance of your data) from 'software' developer / 'hardware' maker (controlling the mechanisms of your data privacy), no matter who and how open-source they are. I'm not sure this instinct applies much to this situation, but it immediately came to mind. Vertical integration is where user privacy (from service providers) starts to erode. Ideally, we should have competing but inter-operable service providers on common platforms and protocols which have nothing to do with the service providers.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- FandangoRanger 6y agoAHHHHH JUST 2 MONTHS OR LESS 'TILL I GET MY L5!
- corser45 6y agoI don't get the price. In EU I get that all for ~7$.