"Giving is receiving" is an old adage that doesn't work for everyone — at least, not when it comes to Wi-Fi. Few of us are happy to discover unauthorized others have been leeching bandwidth off our hotspots' signals.
But a new kind of WiFi hotspot launching later this year wants to change that.
It's called Karma. And, like the regular kind of karma, it works by returning to you what you share with others. In this case, Wi-Fi.
Anyone in the vicinity can log on to your Karma Wi-Fi hotspot for a pay-as-you-go fee of $14 per GB of data. In return for each person who purchases connectivity through your device, you earn 100 Megabytes of free data — about enough to browse the Internet for five hours, and open 10,000 emails.
"It is not tied to a device, or to a network, but to you," co-founder Steven van Wel explains.
In other words, you can use data purchased or earned over one Karma Wi-Fi hotspot to log onto another. There are no contracts, overage fees or subscriptions.
The startup expects to begin shipping hotspots by the end of 2012. The hotspots will sell for $69 and can support up to eight devices.
Karma isn't a broadband provider itself, but it does partner with providers. And it adds a a subtle social layer to sharing Wi-Fi.
Users login to their accounts via Facebook so that hotspot owners can see who is using their device, and they can send a thank you note to a device owner after using it.
If it catches on, Karma could make connecting to the Internet anywhere easier. How many times have you turned on a connected device in a hotel room or restaurant and found a list of private, locked networks — but no open Wi-Fi access?
Ultimately, whether or not Karma is a good deal depends on your device and data habits. AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile all offer 5GB of data per month starting at $50. So if you use more than that — if you watch a lot of Netflix on your iPad, say — Karma could help you avoid expensive overages. Especially if you're sharing your signal a lot and earning free bandwidth.
Will you be giving Karma Wi-Fi a try? Let us know why or why not in the comments.