Helium Mobile, the $20 decentralized mobile network, now offers group plans at same $20 price

Late last year, a young company called Helium Mobile stepped out of early access and into nationwide coverage. The company is a decentralized mobile network, meaning it is designed to work on individually owned and operated nodes rather than traditional cell towers. As a fallback solution, users connect with T-Mobile towers when Wi-Fi and the decentralized network aren’t available.

Helium’s entry to the scene was exciting, but it lacked a core tenet of mobile service: group plans. Today, the company is rectifying that by rolling out group plan support for up to eight lines.

Each line on a group plan is the same as an individual plan. It comes with unlimited data, talk, and text and costs $20 monthly. There are no discounts for having more lines, but it does make it easier for one person to pay/control billing, such as a family with young children.

Since all the lines are wholly unlimited, there are no data buckets for the group to share. And, since each line is essentially the same as an individual line, there are no penalties for people joining or leaving the group.

The big problem, though, is that Helium Mobile currently does not support existing lines joining into a group. In other words, if you already have a Helium line, you must have people create new lines to join your group. This applies not just to the original $5-per-month early adopters in Miami but also to anyone who’s signed up for Helium since it went nationwide in December.

When asked about this, Helium just said to “stay tuned for future updates on this.” Ostensibly, that means we could see support in the future for existing Helium subscribers to join groups. For now, though, this system is a bit flawed.

If you want to give Helium Mobile a shot, visit its site at the link.