First, please allow us to thank you again for your patience during this
very difficult period while we do everything possible to live up to our
commitment to everyone who makes up the unique and highly valued Purism
AweSIM/SIMple cellular service subscriber base. In keeping with what
makes us different within the industry, we have taken the fallout of the
unavoidable event placed upon us by our upstream provider last month and
learned from it as we work night and day to restore all services as
quickly as possible. Part of this work involves reviewing and improving
our operational processes in conducting business. This includes but is
not limited to a more robust network service specification requirement
be created in addition to our strategic preparation of at least two (2)
continually reviewed contingency plan protocols that will have the
ability to quickly identify and correct any issue experienced,
irrespective of how rare they may be.
Soon after utilizing the updated policies, we identified a moderate
situation with the provider we recently chose and signed an agreement
with to restore the carrier interface with our platform. They failed to
meet our amended network specification requirements within the given
timeframe in addition to taking extensive amounts of time to simply
address multi-tier sales/support queries. Therefore, we made the hard
decision to release this provider from the associated agreement while
providing them a limited amount of time to correct these operational
issues. We also reinitiated our qualified provider search, which has
also been taking place 24/7 for the previous twelve (12) days.
As of today, September 27th, 2022, we have completed an initial review
of multiple alternative provider options who have been pre-vetted and
are now going through the final, more detailed, stages of our internal
verification before a final choice is made if replacing the recent
provider becomes a necessity. Once we make more progress and reach the
final stages of restoring the AweSIM/SIMple platform, we will be sure to
let you know. Again, thank for allowing us the time needed to ensure
Rapid ≠ Hasty.
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact us
anytime.
Best regards,
Purism, SPC, Wireless Operations Team
If you only have one phone and you want unlimited data along with unlimited voice and text, you’ll pay at least $100/month with Verizon. And that’s before you pay extra to allow your phone to be a hotspot (which feature is free in most parts of the world outside of the US). There are a lot of available add-ons to jack the price up. But without any of those add-ons, Verizon is a solid $100+ per month if you only have one line. Because Verizon’s prices are so much higher, the taxes are much higher also. So if you’re looking at a rate card that shows one line is much less than $100 per month, go ahead and sign up with them. After adding between $30 to $40 per month in taxes and extra fees, it’ll come to over $100 per month. I get a corporate discount with Verizon on my personal phone because I work for a big employer. But thar deal still sucks because Verizon’s pricing is way too high to begin with. Unless you travel a lot and routinely need roaming in very remote areas, you don’t need Verizon. If you can stay under 4GB/month of data, $15/month is a fair price.
Currently Verizon is offering $90 for unlimited 5G (this includes “hotspot”, but after 50GB of high speed hotspot, it throttles to lower speed). https://www.verizon.com/plans/unlimited/ . Of course AWESim with throttle data after 20GB regardless. And with AWESim you have two extra layers (Purism and a separate MVNO) — and this thread itself shows the danger of those extra layers.
And, as you point out, Verizon is the most expensive. T-mobile unlimited would be much cheaper.
I don’t know if anyone mentioned it before, but Mint Mobile happens to be the cheaper alternative at the moment. We are talking about from $15 to $30 dollars here. Tax included. Even I was tempted to switch over considering cellular phone data services.
This is true if you want data plans. If not, US Mobile can help with cheaper non-data plans. We are talking about from $1.50/$2.00 to $8 dollars here. Tax included.
I would rather, if possible, get Purism to utilize Mint Mobile as Librem 5’s (and Librem 5 USA’s) internet service provider. Of course, there is the matter of sim card layouts to address. Not all phones will accept Mint Mobile’s 3 given sim card input shapes. I don’t even know if Mint Mobile’s services will work with the Librem 5’s (and Librem 5 USA’s) hardware and software anyways.
All in all, I probably won’t mind if Purism provides its own internet service. It would be a nice contribution to freedom GNU/Linux software development and related hardware. If not, then the most cost efficient internet plan might help alleviate consumer budget spending for Purism’s donation/investment fundraising.
Everything but VoLTE calling (which is I guess any calling ) is working great on the Librem 5 with Mint Mobile. I still think that the calling would work with a slight config change, I just don’t know what it would be yet!
Yes, I use Mint Mobile. I pay $180 once per year and don’t pay anything monthly for cell service. It works as well as Verizon in the city and almost as well as Verizon in most smaller towns. There are some dead areas in between cities with Mint where Verizon still works. But then sometimes Verizon has dead areas in between some cities too. So to pay 6x the price to cover a once-per-year situation just isn’t worth it.
I would think CREDO Mobile (https://www.credomobile.com/our-story/) would match better with a social purpose corporation, but everyone’s got their own priorities.
Nothing new under the sun sir. Its been what, at least 6 weeks since the outage started? I’m curious how many AweSIM/SIMple customers are still hanging on. I’ve been considering giving Mint or T-Mobile a shot. I’m using Puretalk on my iPhone right now and am pretty underwhelmed with current data speeds.
Another week with no update from Purism. I have to wonder if they’re even planning to bring back their cell service or just quietly retire it, because they’re sure not in a hurry to get it up and running again. I emailed support this week asking if I should pause my subscription since I’ve gotten charged for SIMple twice while it’s down and got no response.
If they do plan to retire it, I hope they at least give us a way to port out our numbers.
I doubt they plan to retire it, recurring revenue is the holy grail for businesses, but it is disappointing that they would continue to charge customers for services they’re not currently providing… that’s… not a good look.
Yes, and I left my subscription active (IIRC you can pause it if you log in to your Purism account) because I didn’t want to lose my number, and because I thought service would be restored “any minute now” a month ago and the refund or service extension could be sorted out later.
I left my subscription active as well, but Purism has not been hitting my credit card with it. I’d pause it if I was in your position. Purism shouldn’t be charging you for a service they aren’t delivering. I can forgive a few days, even a week, but 2 months? Not a chance.
Support got back to me yesterday and recommended for me not to take any action with my subscription if I wanted to continue using the service when it is restored.
Did they at least offer to refund the amount charged for the time where there has been no service? That seems like customer service 101 and I’m hoping that was just omitted from your update here.
Especially with the comment from tactical panda saying they’ve not been being charged during the outage as if billing should have been paused but maybe your account was just missed in that pause?
Edit to clarify that the pausing I’m referring to would be billing on their end different than pausing service on your end.
) is working great on the Librem 5 with Mint Mobile. I still think that the calling would work with a slight config change, I just don’t know what it would be yet!