
Plume is turning home Wi-Fi into a subscription service - el_duderino
https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/6/12/17416982/plume-superpod-adaptive-wifi-subscription-service-announced
======
oldcynic
Apparently it is the week I really live up to my current HN username.

I'm sorry I _do not want_ a subscription for everything. There are a few
things that make a lot of sense on a subscription. Phone service, Netflix,
cloud services etc. Car leasing can make sense.

There are an awful lot of things that are being forced into a subscription
model. Editors, routers, throwaway printers with their delightfully expensive
DRM'd inks. Purely as a means to squeeze a little more cash out of the punter.

 _" It seems inevitable that subscription services will come to more routers.
We rarely buy new ones, and subscriptions give these companies a way to keep
making money"_

It does? Why? After 30 years of free, mostly junk, modems and routers from the
ISP that rarely got replaced? Routers get replaced when the magic smoke
escapes. Unless you're an outlier, like me, who reads HN the only interest you
had in the router was connecting the phone and laptop when you unboxed it.

No, can't make sense of this.

No, I don't want an extended warranty with my £29 toaster either.

------
Rjevski
It could make sense if you were essentially _leasing_ Wi-Fi gear, so that you
would always get the latest and greatest as the Wi-Fi standard evolves -
receive new gear and send back the old gear every year or so.

But this does not make any sense. You are already _buying_ a router, and
they're tacking on a subscription on top, for what appears to be snake oil.

~~~
sandworm101
Wifi doesn't work like that. Replacing all your installed wifi gear every week
with the latest and greatest doens't improve much if you aren't also upgrading
your individual devices. There is some room to play, but most all developments
in wifi need upgrades to both routers and devices.

Furthermore, as wifi is a shared medium, your experience is heavily dependent
on the behavior of your neighbors. Routers can hop channels all they want,
that doesn't make more room in the spectrum. If you want to stream a billion
gigs per second over your fancy AC++ router, something that requires exactly
half the available spectrum, you better live deep in the woods.

~~~
0xCMP
It may not, but it'd make more sense than their current offering.

------
onychomys
The ars article about it has a lot more info about why they're doing it and
how it works etc.

[https://arstechnica.com/features/2018/06/exclusive-plumes-
ne...](https://arstechnica.com/features/2018/06/exclusive-plumes-new-superpod-
hardware-is-here-and-its-fast/)

~~~
brentjanderson
This helped frame the subscription for me:

> ...If you let an annual membership lapse, your pods do not turn into
> paperweights; they just revert to the same status they had when you first
> turned them on. That means they'd have a very simple "we found each other,
> good enough" topology rather than a more optimal one determined by Plume's
> cloud NOC; you'd also lose any other features dependent on the NOC, like
> client-specific rulesets. > The other perk of a membership in good standing
> is a rolling lifetime warranty for all pods... even after the original
> design is no longer manufactured. If you have a v1 pod that fails in 2022,
> you'll get a replacement with whatever 802.11ax-compliant replacement design
> is current then, for example. > I'd recommend that anybody who's super angry
> about the "membership" concept to look into an apples-to-apples comparison
> that encompasses this lifetime cost. For example, in this article I compared
> a four-Superpod startup pack at $259. Add a $200 membership and it's $459
> compared to the cost of an Eero + 2 Beacons (currently $389) or an Orbi
> RBK-53 (currently $530). If you're on the fence, you can make the initial
> buy with an annual membership and upgrade the annual to lifetime with a
> prorated refund of the remaining time on the annual. There's also a 60-day
> full-refund policy on both the hardware and the membership fee if you decide
> the system is not for you.

This seems a bit better than my initial impression, but I hope their messaging
around the subscription frames it similarly to this article.

~~~
choward
> Update June 12th, 12:10PM ET: After publication, a Plume representative
> reached out to say that the company had changes its policies between my
> phone call with Diner and today. The company will, in fact, require a
> subscription for Plume Pods to stay functional.

~~~
onychomys
Sheesh. They just got taken back off my list. That's just so dumb.

------
jrockway
I don't quite understand the negativity. Everyone complains about how IoT
devices are a security nightmare because manufacturers don't update the
software. Now you are paying the ongoing cost to get that engineering done.

You could pay upfront, and many people do (that's what "enterprise" is and why
it's $2000 for a $200 router)... but now the price of ongoing support is in
reach of the average customer. (But they're mad that ongoing support is
actually expensive.)

Now of course, if they do the same half-ass job that other router
manufacturers do with ongoing support, the subscription fee won't be worth it.
But if the product does continually improve relative to other offerings, then
maybe it's the right business model.

Anyway, it is pure honesty to split out the hardware cost and the software
engineering cost. The question is whether or not it's actually worthwhile to
pay the software engineering cost. It's a pretty new idea, and there are
plenty of reasons to not trust it... but in theory, I like it.

~~~
Bud
The negativity is easy to understand. Somehow, Apple managed to sell routers
for 20 years, and keep them updated for over a decade after purchase, without
charging exorbitant fees for routine software updates. How did they manage
that? They didn't do it in a "halfass" way, either.

~~~
jrockway
How sustainable a business was that, though? Obviously it was not making them
huge amounts of money, because they stopped doing it.

------
gruez
Great, so now in addition to paying a monthly fee for internet service and a
monthly fee for the modem rental, you also have to pay a monthly fee for your
router?

~~~
rayiner
What service doesn't let you outright buy the modem?

~~~
ergothus
Comcast let me use my own router, then decided it was theirs and charged me
rent anyway.

A few years later, I was stuck with them again in another state and bought my
own from their approved list...then a few months later that model was no
longer approved and any issue was blamed on using an unapproved/outdated
model.

~~~
koala_man
Same. I used to have a monthly calendar reminder to call Comcast and complain
about the modem rental charge for my personally owned modem.

Every month they would agree to waive the fee and promise to fix it, and every
month it would be back on my bill.

This went on for about a year until I cancelled my service, and then they
hounded me weekly to "return" the modem.

------
frgtpsswrdlame
Is there some sort of consumer psychology behind this whole 'as a service'
push? It seems like monthly bills kind of go in the back of people's heads and
they rarely consider the full cost in the way they do normal purchasing. Maybe
we should have a law surrounding subscription services since it seems like
they're making increased profit off exploiting a tick in the human psyche as
opposed to actually making a better product.

~~~
sizzzzlerz
It's the same "thinking" that makes many people care more about low monthly
car payments by taking out 6- or even 7-year car loans. They totally ignore
how much that is actually costing them to get a new, shiny car that they
really can't afford or the fact that their new car will only be worth a
fraction of what they paid for it at the end of the loan. There's certainly no
law preventing car dealers from taking advantage of that. Why is this
different?

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
Interesting, I'm actually testing out my own thought here. I guess I would say
there is a difference between these two scenarios:

(1) I can't afford to outright purchase a product that would normally cost
$10,000 so I choose to finance it and pay $12,000 over 5 years (or whatever.)

(2) I could afford to outright purchase a product that would normally cost
$100 but instead I have to pay over time, say $500 over 5 years.

It seems to me that a lot of the more recent SaaS stuff is associated with a
very large price increase probably because there's no on-prem price to compare
to, no stated rate of interest or any of that information you get from a car
loan. So I suppose my problem is that the premium on these products is much
higher due to obfuscation and these companies (like Plume) don't offer a
comparable option to buy outright.

------
Cuuugi
This seems identical to Meraki's
([https://meraki.cisco.com/](https://meraki.cisco.com/)) business model, but
the enterprise space seems like a lot smarter way to push a subscription
model.

------
woah
All these comments dismissing this model are just reacting to the flippant
tone in the article. ~70% of service calls to ISPs are for issues that are
within the home, be it interference, or a misconfigured or even unplugged
router. Managed WiFi, where a rented router is remotely administered, is a
very good way to deal with this stuff. It greatly reduces the number of truck
rolls that an ISP has to do. Sure, maybe ATTs service sucks, but everything
they do sucks. I am a little puzzled by the choice to sell this straight to
consumer, since most managed WiFi manufacturers sell their routers to the ISP
to be leased to the consumer (or supplied free).

~~~
dmitrygr
They never claimed to provide support. Only something vague called active
management. What could you possibly imagine that would actually be that would
actually help anyone in any actual real-life case?

~~~
woah
Typically managed wifi involves both remote administration of the router(s),
and phone support. Having the remote access means that the user can just pick
up the phone and describe the problem, and the technician can solve it
remotely, or with a little assistance from the user "try moving the router
over near the door". I assume that they are doing this as well.

~~~
dmitrygr
wiling to bet that they are not. Callcenters and people do not scale.

------
magic5227
If we held the companies responsible for the security of their IoT devices,
this wouldn't be necessary. Instead none are liable when our smart
refrigerators get hacked.

Let's change that instead of pushing the cost on consumers.

~~~
maxxxxx
Reminds me of paying for identity protection services.

------
ghobs91
It never ceases to amaze me how arrogant some tech startups can be with their
pricing. Plume is one of many that seem to target consumers that
simultaneously have a lot of disposable income and are stupid with their
money.

A subscription fee for a router that I still need to pay for, on top of the
internet that I'm ALREADY paying for? Get outta here. How does it make any
sense to charge subscription pricing for hardware that you have to pay upfront
for?

------
bhhaskin
This seems like just a money grab. No thanks.

------
bb88
How about this?

$10/month for three units with free hardware upgrades every 3 years (and no
upfront cost).

That comes to $120/year, and I don't have to worry about replacing the
hardware to get the latest wi-fi standards / features / hardware fixes.

Google wi-fi is $299 for 3 units. Expected life time is 3 years before
obsolescence sets in.

~~~
cannonedhamster
How about no. I just bought a single unit and it covers my entire house and
gets security updates for a few years and it costs way less than $360 every 3
years. I literally can buy multiple routers and come in less than that for
better than what they offer. Not to mention that this "model" requires a
government mandate to work otherwise cheap Chinese knock offs with good enough
security will flood the market. As a liberal, I've seen enough of the
government and their idea of "the internet".

------
pavel_lishin
> _Plume’s subscription service will cost $60 per year, or $200 for a lifetime
> membership._

I really, really hope that buying the lifetime membership unlocks your pods
(or whatever, or however it works) - and that Plume going out of business
doesn't fuck you over and lock you into the "free" tier.

~~~
wccrawford
It sounds like non-free-tier stuff happens on their servers, so Plume going
out of business would lock you into free tier anyhow.

------
httpz
If you can setup your own router and troubleshoot problems I don't think it'll
be worth it.

However, if this can solve my parents' Wifi problems so they don't have to
wait till next Thanksgiving for me to come fix it, I'll totally tell them to
sign up for it.

------
mountainofdeath
Anyone else hear echoes of Cisco Meraki? I can see that model working in
commercial environments where the network itself is often managed by a third-
party. But for home users, it's paying a premium for nothing of value.

~~~
hedora
In fairness, plume discounts the hardware with a subscription, so the pricing
is fairly competitive. However, I cannot see bothering with a subscription
when the competition is at $85/access point and works without an account.

------
hedora
Has anyone tried out Ubiquiti’s mesh offering? A three access point solution
is priced similarly to this,l plus a lifetime membership (but presumably keeps
working without the cloud)

------
xivzgrev
Click bait alert. They are turning wifi router hardware into a subscription,
not Wi-Fi itself. In case the author or any readers were unaware, home Wi-Fi
is already a subscription from Comcast, AT&T etc.

~~~
RIMR
If you bothered to read the article, you would see that you still purchase the
equipment, but pay a subscription just to keep it running.

At least your Comcast/AT&T "Wi-Fi Subscription" actually comes with Internet
access and rental hardware. Plume is having you buy the hardware and then pay
$5/month just for the privilege of keeping the firmware running.

This business model is already the norm for enterprise firewalls and network
security appliances, but that's not what Plume is. Plume is just a Mesh
network, no different than just meshing a few OpenWRT devices together...

~~~
AlexandrB
> This business model is already the norm for enterprise firewalls and network
> security appliances, but that's not what Plume is.

One reason this makes sense for enterprise hardware is that you get a real
person on the phone if something goes wrong. I doubt I'd be able to get a
Plume representative to help me no matter how many years I subscribe for.

