For those following mobile internet options, it’s been a head spinning bad teenage romance novel this past week.
Millenicom Unlimited customers, who’s plans were on the Sprint footprint, were served a cold dish on October 18th:
Sprint has discontinued service to our gateway provider, unfortunately
that means we can no longer provide the Unlimited or BYOD Plan to you.We anticipate your plan to be discontinued by Sprint by the end of this
month. We can offer a couple options for you available through October 31, 2013.1. Continue your service through the BMI.net Unlimited/BYOD Plan. They
have agreed to honor your service through the end of this month at no
charge with an ongoing monthly service fee of $79.99.2. Switch your service to the Millenicom 20GB Hotspot Plan. We will
provide a Novatel MiFi 4620LE with activation and shipping free of charge.
And then just a few days later, customers started reporting to us that they were getting e-mails that there might be hope for a reversal. And our personal contact with Millenicom’s owner, Dennis Castle, confirmed he was doing his best, but wanted his customers to be prepared for the worst.
And then Monday afternoon – after folks were already in progress of making alternate plans, the official word came out – things were patched up and Millenicom would be able to continue serving its Sprint customers.
We have been alerted by our gateway that we can continue your Unlimited or BYOD Plan. We sincerely apologize for the difficulty this issue presented. Our intent was to put you first and keep you informed if an interruption was forthcoming and we are relieved it has reached a satisfactory resolution.
Hooray! There was a huge sigh of relief.
But then the bad news started hitting just last evening, as Millenicom was forced to retract the statement.
We are very sorry to report that Sprint has reversed their decision from yesterday and terminated their agreement with the gateway for our Unlimited and BYOD accounts.
We are not certain how long until the accounts will be closed.
We will be shipping out Hotspot devices to those clients who had opted for that solution and BMI.net is ready to fulfill orders for those chosing to go with them.
We have attempted to keep you informed every step of the way and avoid any abrupt transition. We apologize that we weren’t able to come through.
So, what does this mean?
It means one less option for affordable high bandwidth mobile internet for us RVers.
The Millenicom Unlimited plans were one of the last available unlimited, reasonably national cellular data-only options that one could buy without a grandfathered in plan, or violating any terms of service.
The plan did however come with a 50GB/month cavaet that Millenicom reserved the right to investigate the account for unauthorized use.
We’ve never recommended the unlimited Millenicom plans as a primary source of mobile internet for those needing ‘nearly everywhere’ access. Simply because it was on the Sprint network.
And Sprint is mainly only viable in major urban areas, and their 4G network just now starting to grow. But we have recommended it in the past for those wanting an unlimited source of data for streaming video or other high bandwidth use if, and only if, they planned to be in major metro areas often enough to utilize it.
As Sprint’s LTE network has started to expand, our curiosity had been re-piqued as to if the plan might be a worthwhile contender to be on our radar again.
For those who value the Sprint network and higher bandwidth caps, here are the current alternative options that we know of (disclaimer: we have no experience , or affiliation, with any of these):
- BMI.Net service for $79.99/month for ‘unlimited’ Sprint service for existing Millenicom Sprint customers, or customer who bring their own compatible device. However, be sure to read the fine print – they start getting suspicious of ‘non normal use’ after 30GB of use a month, and specifically prohibit things like streaming video.
- WirelessnWifi’s ‘unlimited’ plan – for $58.99/mo, and some upfront purchasing of equipment. However, note that it is unlimited 4G only, and has a cap of 5GB per month on 3G – which is still what a lot of Sprint’s footprint is. (Word on the interwebs is that they are suspending activating new accounts until they learn how the Millenicom thing might impact them.)
- EVDODepotUSA – Has plans ranging from $99 – 125/month, some offering ‘unlimited’ on the Sprint network, but reportedly only including Sprint’s WiMax 4G service, not their new LTE markets. It also has a 6 month contract.
Does this Impact the 20GB Verizon Plan?
Of course, our immediate concern when we learned of this fiasco was if our Verizon 20GB Hotspot plan with Millenicom might be in danger. So we wrote Dennis, owner of Millenicom, and asked.
He explained to us that Millenicom has a long history of troubles with Sprint, and this is the third time they’ve had their relationship terminated. We don’t know the details of the relationship history, or even what the crux of the current situation is.
Was it the third party gateway between them that soiled the relationship? Did too many Millenicom customers consistently actually use ‘unlimited’ bandwidth? That’s not information we’re privy to.
But what Dennis did assure us of, is that their relationship with Verizon has had no such prior troubles and nothing is on their radar. Which gives us confidence that there’s no immediate danger for our precious Verizon 20GB plan.
But it does give us a wake-up call – the very resources that we depend on to enable our nomadic lifestyle are fragile. There’s no guarantees or promises that we’ll always be able to always get this super sweet deal of 20GB a month of Verizon data for $69.99/month with no contract. We must always be prepared to be agile, as folks who have been depending on the unlimited Sprint plan must be now.
What we do trust based on our personal communication with Millenicom, is that they have done everything in their power to keep their customers informed as things were happening with Sprint, and they are actively working to forge new relationships.
We appreciate and respect that. And we don’t envy the pressure their staff has been under to deal with these rapidly changing circumstances.
Let us know if you’re impacted with this, what other alternatives you’re finding and any experiences you have dealing with the BMI.Net migration path.
More related posts on mobile internet:
To those who say they live in a rural area and the nearest wired connection is a few miles away, that is a very solvable problem. For a few hundred dollars, you can get equipment to transmit high speed internet up to 30 miles, line of sight. Check out companies like Streakwave wireless, or other wireless equipment distributors.
I did this in Costa Rica, and used this equipment to distribute a satellite internet signal among 10 houses over and area of several square miles, and divided the cost among the homeowners. It is not much harder to configure that a standard household router.
You would have to have a friend that lives in the wired internet area that would allow you to order an internet connect to be installed at their place and to put a small antenna on a pole or roof that you point back to your home location. You would have a similar antenna on a pole or roof at your house.
This is exactly what I’m going to be doing…I found a provider in my area (https://nrvunwired.net/index.html) that does this same thing…they came out and did a test o the service and speeds on Tuesday and they just called this morning to say they would install the antenna next Monday so I should be online by Thanksgiving with better speeds than I had with 3G! Again though, this service is line-of-sight but luckily I’m a ham radio operator with a large communications tower near the house so it’s easy to get the signal over the trees. I think it’s going to cost around $200 for them to install the equipment and cable…
This is an awesome alternative – thanks for sharing about it!
Sometimes using a mobile data plan for a fixed location is like trying to put a square peg in a round hole. There are often better alternatives with just a bit of creative thinking.
I too am a former Millenicom customer who had the unlimited BYOD plan. I switched to BMI soon as I heard the news to hopefully avoid a service interruption…but that didn’t help. It’s been a roller coaster ride having to buy a new sprint device with a clean ESN and still no internet. I’ve emailed BMI repeatedly and only received a short response by a foreigner that said everything would be working by Wednesday Nov. 20th. That’s still not the case…I’m still without internet service through BMI and my device appears to be “unactivated” and BMI simply hasn’t done anything to correct the issue while stating that they have completed nearly 90% of their orders from folks moving from Millenicom. I don’t see it…or I’m simply part of the 10% who haven’t be activated yet.
I did however order the 20GB plan from Millenicom last week on Nov. 15th. They shipped it the same day and I requested expedited service; received the Verizon device that following Monday Nov. 18th…and now have my internet back…although VERY limited by the 20GB cap. I’m a PhD student and simply have to have the internet at home…but I’m limited to dialup, satellite, or wireless broadband through Verizon or Sprint. No more PS3 and gaming now that there’s a cap to the data plan…wife hates it…I hate it…but there’s nothing much we can do.
I’m still waiting though…hopefully BMI will come through but I’m not holding my breath and I’m sure they will eventually have problems in the near future unless something is done. It’s sad when rural Americans who can’t get cable/fiber installed are forced to use crap like dialup or satellite simply because the two big companies who make BILLIONS $$$ squabble over usage…you’d think they would like to have more customers but I lost faith in both Verizon and Sprint years ago.
Maybe one day there will be truely unlimited data access across the entire United States…maybe…
To be fair – the big cellular companies are spending billions right now to grow their networks. There is an absolutely crazy amount of money being spent to increase speeds and coverage, and competition is fierce.
As a consumer, I want unlimited data too. It is too much trouble to try and worry about controlling usage, or tracking down the usage hogging apps. Unlimited keeps things a lot simpler.
But I don’t envy the cellular companies – they have to figure out how to handle vast and growing demand for what is actually a very limited resource. There is only so much wireless spectrum to go around, and I’ve started to see reports that in some metro areas even Verizon’s brand new LTE network is already starting to reach its saturation point.
There is future potential to repurpose old TV channel spectrum for wireless devices, and other technical tricks too. But rolling out new technologies will require spending billions more, and all new equipment on both ends of the connection.
– Chris
Anthony, I too hope that those of us in rural America can one day have internet options that are even somewhat comparable to those offered in urban and suburban areas. Like you, my only home internet options are dial-up, satellite, or mobile broadband. After years of endless frustration with satellite internet, we discovered Millenicom. We were so excited to finally be able to connect our internet enabled devices to the internet…only to find that we still did not have the speed to access all of their features. Even so, at least we were able to access their basic functions and update software occasionally.
This transition from Millenicom to BMI has been an absolute nightmare. We have been completely without internet since we lost service at the end of October. I have made numerous phone calls to BMI with absolutely no results. On several occasions I have been transferred to various extensions to leave a voicemail, but I have yet to receive a single call back. Tuesday, my new device (which ordered and paid for at the beginning of the month) arrived. I was so excited to connect it…until I discovered that it doesn’t provide a consistent connection. If I’m lucky enough to get connected at all, it only lasts a few short minutes until the connection is dropped.
Last night I spend over an hour on the phone with tech support attempting to resolve the issue, before having my call disconnected when I was asked to hold.
I have now ordered the hotspot from Millenicom as well, and we will also have to adjust to having severely limited internet access at home. That should be especially fun with two teenagers in the house, and a couple of parents who do a good bit of work from home. I don’t know what else to do.
People like us need to unite somehow and have our voices heard. Internet has become a necessity in today’s data driven society, and those of us in rural areas are being forced to pay outrageous prices for minimal access, while the major providers focus their efforts upon increasing speeds for subscribers who already have service far superior to anything offered to us. Personally, my subdivision is 1.5 miles from the closest cable internet, and I’ve been begging the cable company for years to consider expanding their service to reach us. I just don’t understand…
Rural service is a tricky issue – and it typically isn’t greed that is keeping wireline and wireless broadband service away. It is actually the costs of installing it.
In an urban area, one 1.5 mile branch of wires might serve thousands of customers – and installing it pays back its investment rapidly. In a rural area, a 1.5 mile wire extension might cost $10’s of thousands of dollars, and the costs might not ever realistically be recouped with only a tiny handful of potential customers to serve.
There is a strong rural lobby however, and the reason electricity and phone service made it into the rural areas in the first place is actually from acts of congress – the Rural Utilities Service provides interest free loans and other support to bring utilities to rural areas. This is actually an agency of the USDA, and goes back to the 1930’s.
The Universal Service Fund that we all currently pay for on our phone bills is also used to subsidize rural service to keep it affordable. There is a lot of current debate over how this fund should evolve to target broadband service as well. Look into it – and talk to your congresspersons.
I guess it depends on where you live — in rural areas I can see it feel like you are being forced to pay outrageous prices for minimal access. And in urban and suburban areas, I can see people being upset feeling forced into paying higher bills to subsidizes rural service.
It is a really tricky balance to strike.
Have you considered banding together with your neighbors to have your own wires installed? I had a friend who had to pay out of his pocket to get cable run to his rural home, but he managed to split the substantial costs with two neighbors.
Good luck,
– Chris
Just an update on my previous status. I lost internet service at the end of October, like everyone else. Initially I attempted to switch to BMI, but on November 12th, decided to give up on them and go back to Millenicom for their hotspot based on the Verizon service with the 20GB limit. As of today (Nov 20th) Millenicom still has not shipped the hotspot unit. I received this from them this morning:
We are in the process of shipping out all Hotspot orders as quickly as possible. As you imagine we have quite a few orders to process through.
You will be receiving an automated e-mail from stamps.com with a USPS Tracking # as soon as the order is fulfilled.
Thank you for your patience and understanding during this process.
Millenicom
I am really surprised that no one has mentioned contacting the Federal Communications Commission about the problem with Sprint not releasing devices. The FCC has stringent rules about this with regard to voice services. I do not know what the regulations are for data only devices but I think the FCC needs to be made aware of both the problem AND to start thinking about the needs of all the nomadic and rural customers that depend on these services in todays data driven economy.
Also, I have used Sprint for over a decade now without problems BUT I have on older (3G only) device which allows me to control roaming — no Sprint tower, no connection, which has not been a problem for me so far. Are newer devices capable of locking out roaming (which is hugely expensive for carriers) ?
Um … just recalled that some folks may be confused by the term ‘roaming’ which in carrier parlance means connecting through another carriers tower, not just connecting while moving.
e3
trying to get on with bmi with no sucess or support(for the most part).
stuck working 9-5(woo hoo i work bmi’s buisness hours!)
please note bmis tech support chat is also down.
may go and see if millenicom will send me a mifi 20gb.
and cry till it arives.
stuck waiting with little or no support.
I’m right there with you. I’m a REALTOR who usually does 50% or more of my work from home, and my husband relies on our home internet for his job as well. This past week has been torture! I’ve been stuck spending early mornings and late nights at my office and my husband spends his days hunting for wifi hotspots. I finally received my confirmation email saying that my replacement had shipped on Tuesday, and would arrive in 2-6 business days. It’s so frustrating to know that we’ve now spent about $150…and still have no internet service! I just wish I had some other option, but apparently I’m just stuck waiting and crying with you while I hope that they finally come through for us…and then I’ll just hold my breath and hope the same thing doesn’t happen again when BMI and Sprint eventually have a falling out.
Great informative and detailed information as usual. Thanks for keep us informed! I have used Millenicom on the Verizon footprint while in full time rv mode for about 18 months and have been so pleased with it. I dread the day that I read that Millenicom is having troubles with Verizon, but your message here put me at ease that it is unlikely that will happen.
Safe travels,
Chad
OK, an update: We got a phone call from BMI today that played a recorded message. You can hear a similar message by calling the main BMI number and pressing 7 (special message for former Millenicom customers). The new message as of today is that Sprint is not going to unlock the devices, or if they do, it might be a month or more, so the recommendation is to buy a new device.
You can either do that through BMI here: https://my.bmi.net/forms/m2-hardwarespecial.cfm or do it yourself and then contact BMI with the ESN of the device you purchase. I am in the process of attempting the latter, but that will take until next week. Will post an update when/if I am ultimately successful.
Wow.. that’s just an extra pain in the behind for you folks having to deal with this.
We encountered a similar problem with Sprint when we signed up for our BYOD plan with Millenicom, in that Sprint wanted to take a month to release the ESN after we cancelled our service with them. It took a lot of moving up the support ladder with Sprint to get them to cooperate and release (they had cut us off because of excessive roaming, so we too were without internet). So I don’t think this is isolated to just the Millenicom fiasco, but rather standard operating for Sprint, unfortunately.
My complaint with Millenicom is that I opted to switch to the Hotspot 20GB plan when this issue first came up. Even got a tracking# (that never actually shipped). Then the back-and-forth with Sprint, and then the final “reversal” (i.e. “we will be shipping devices…”). Well, it’s 3 days later, and I have no hotspot device, and I have no internet (I use this at home for primary internet — I work from home, and our house is so far back in the woods, that I have no other options other than satellite, which simply doesn’t work for my needs due to the latency issues). I realize that Millenicom’s hands are tied with Sprint, but why in the world did then not ship those hotspots out (express) THE SECOND THAT SPRINT REVERSED THEIR DECISION? I contacted them this morning, and was told that my devices STILL has not been shipped yet. NOT A HAPPY MILLENICOM CUSTOMER (at the moment).
i am a sad internet user who has a esn that is still locked
.
pray for me and all the others trying to transfer to bmi.
i truely suspect sprint has no concept how may good customers they are hurting with this stupdity.
the problem shouldnt be the using unlimited internet when that is what sprint sold.
this is a fine example of why the fcc needs to try to pass regulation to pass reasonable caps for cell phone/home(rural) broadband services.
Any idea why Millenicom is the ONLY Verizon MVNO in the known universe? A lot of RVers have all their eggs in the Millenicom basket—would be nice if there was a “bmi.net” for VZW as well…
Actually… BMI does offer Verizon plans. The deals just aren’t as attractive.
Yow, I see what you mean by “aren’t as attractive”—BMI isn’t even competitive with Verizon’s own rates of $50/5GB or $80/10GB!
I guess I was really asking, how come no other VZW MVNO comes close to Millenicom’s rate?
I live in a rural area where mobile and satellite internet are our only home internet options. When Millenicom notified me about the discontinuation of service, the only option I was given was a transfer to BMI, which I did. However, I now have no internet at all and received the following email:
Dear BMI Mobile Broadband Customer,
If your mobile broadband account has already been restored or is not having problems then please disregard the rest of this message.
The setup of your BMI Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) mobile broadband account was completed a number of days ago. As the name states, these BYOD accounts do require you to provide your own hardware. The hardware you were using with Millenicom will work with your new BMI account.
However, it appears there is a problem with your device being released by Sprint. We have tried repeatedly to assign your device to our gateway account with BMI but are being told that your device belongs to another account and it must be released first.
Millenicom officially has released the hardware and requested that Sprint release the devices from the now closed gateway accounts.
So, we all sit impatiently waiting for Sprint to release your USB device so that we can assign it to one of our active gateways. This will get you back online. Their is nothing BMI can do because these prior accounts are not ours and Sprint will not talk to us about them.
As a backup plan, we have ordered a large quantity of new USB Mobile Broadband & MiFi units. We are ordering these at wholesale and should have an alternate hardware option for you tomorrow or Friday.
We continue to appreciate your patience and the opportunity to serve your Internet needs.
I think we all wish we had met under better circumstances but we look forward to a long and friendly relationship.
Just to be clear, you are also still eligible for a no questions asked full refund.
We continue to update our technincal support system status recording every several hours with the latest information that we have on the situation.
The Best,
Ruben Bybee
Owner
Blue Mountain Internet
Sincerely,
Blue Mountain Internet
1644 Plaza Way #628
Walla Walla, WA 99362
http://www.bmi.net
CustomerCare@bmi.net
I am just so frustrated right now…
Thank you for sharing. That is an impressively friendly, well written and informative custom service message.
Sorry that so many are caught in a really bad spot with this, as I know some folks in rural areas depend on this service.
I switched over to bmi.net and I have an account page on their portal that says my account status is active and that I have the SMBB-BYOD1 plan. However, my Sprint service went out at 8:15 this morning Pacific time, and has not returned. Attempts to contact bmi.net by phone, email or live chat have not been successful.
Thanks for the report Bob. We’re seeing similar reports on the DSLReports forums too – apparently one of their gateways is down and they’re attempting to reroute all the new influx of traffic this morning.
Back in 2008 we had Sprint via Millenicom. Sprint bumped us off for too much roaming. (How did they not understand that RVers move a lot?) So we switched to Verizon via Millenicom, put that on hold while we were doing other things, and reactivated it this fall when I hit the road again. I like Millenicom. But I have my iPhone available as a backup hot spot just in case.
We started out RVing with a Sprint direct unlimited grandfathered in plan, and had them shut us down for excessive roaming in 2010. That’s when we switched to Millenicom’s BYOD Sprint plan, with the promise that the roaming limitations weren’t an issue. We never really had a chance to put that to the test, as we ended up closing the account when we moved to the Virgin Islands for the winter. So thank you for relating that it can and did happen to you!
When we came back, we decided to give the Millenicom Verizon plan a chance, and have never looked back. Never knew how much bandwidth we were missing while using Sprint. 🙂
We too keep a 10GB dataplan with AT&T via our iPhone mobile share plan as part of our arsenal. Plenty of times we’ve needed it as a back-up to Verizon.