Prepaid Phone News picked up a bit of information stating that enVie Mobile was shutting down and rather abruptly. EnVie Mobile has since confirmed this on their own website.
EnVie Mobile has issued the following vague statement in regards to the closing:
Due to circumstances beyond our control with our underlying carrier, all enVie Mobile services has been suspended. This does not affect the services on H2O, H2O Bolt and easyGO. Please contact Customer Service at 1 800-420-6981 about re-establishing your service. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.
EnVie Mobile initially launched service in October of 2014 as a Verizon MVNO with 3G only service. They later added LTE service when Verizon was kind enough to finally allow it's MVNO's to provide such service.
EnVie Mobile was actually run by Locus Telecommunications, the company that also still operates H2O Wireless and EasyGO, both of which are AT&T MVNO's. Locus Telecommunications is based out of New Jersey, and it is now a subsidiary of the KDDI Corporation. The KDDI Corporation is a Telecommunications company located in Tokyo Japan that generates billions of dollars in revenue annually.
The news of EnVie Mobile closing comes almost exactly one month after another mid tier MVNO brand had to shut down, RingPlus.
I find the brand closing to be rather puzzling given its large financial backing. I also find how abruptly it happened to be rather alarming and unprofessional. EnVie Mobile customers have now been forced to find a new provider and actually lost service upon the announcement. What kind of customer support is that? If Locus Telecommunications is going to treat its customers this way, I have a lot less confidence in the brand than I previously did. Stopping service and closing abruptly shows a total disregard for the consumer, and I highly doubt that the company didn't have any idea in advance that this would be occurring.
To compensate EnVie Mobile customers for a loss of service, H2O is offering affected customers a free month of service on H2O's $40 plan, which is essentially another middle finger to the consumer in my book. As mentioned, H2O Wireless operates on AT&T's network, while EnVie Mobile used Verizon's network, so unless you have one of just a handful of devices that are capable of operating on both networks, you cannot take advantage of this offer.
I suspect that EnVie Mobile did not have very many subscribers, given that the last time an MVNO shutdown, a large spike in traffic to BestMVNO.com was observed due to people scrambling to find a new phone plan. Currently, there has not been a run on visitors trying to find a new Verizon MVNO plan due to this closing. If you are one of the few affected customers out there, I suggest you have a look at this Verizon MVNO list to help you find a new provider.
So Wireless news fans, what do you think of yet another MVNO closing down? Does it sour you on the idea of using an MVNO for service, or do you just care about getting the best monthly rate possible from whomever?
What’s going on with this site? There hasn’t been anything new here since this enVie Mobile ‘story’.
Apparently this isn’t big enough ‘news’ for a discussion.
I wouldn’t necessarily blame H2O. Verizon could be at fault. EnVie’s pricing wasn’t nearly as good as that of H2O’s GSM service. In light of the other changes made by H2O on their plans they likely had no real need to keep the higher priced CDMA mvno unless they were able to negotiate a better deal with Verizon. I couldn’t when I was with them and apparently neither could Paul Marcarelli.