Thanks to a tip from a Redditor, BestMVNO has learned that Ultra Mobile is discontinuing its 5G Home Internet plans. An FAQs page on the Ultra Mobile Home Internet website has been setup with some details about the shutdown. Service will officially end on November 1, 2023, and September 30, 2023, is the last time that customers will be billed for it. The company is telling its customers to consider EarthLink as a provider to switch their internet plan to.
Ultra Mobile does have a relationship with EarthLink, which helps to explain their recommendation. When EarthLink launched wireless plans of its own, as noted in a BestMVNO article from October 2021, the plans were openly advertised as being powered by Ultra Mobile. In December 2021, EarthLink went on to offer 5G home internet plans. Although it didn't advertise who powered their home internet offerings, it was highly likely Ultra Mobile who was prepping the launch of their own home internet plans.
Ultra Mobile soft-launched its 5G Home Internet plans in February 2022, and the offerings were detailed in a report from BestMVNO. The reason why the plans are now being discontinued have not been specified, but a few possible reasons stand out.
One reason the plans may be getting discontinued is that they didn't attract enough subscribers for Ultra Mobile to continue to devote resources to them. In fact they were pretty expensive when first launched. A 10GB plan cost $54.99, and a 50GB plan was $109.98. Pricing was later improved when the 50GB plan price was lowered to $79.99. Still, the pricing was expensive, and the data allotments for the price weren't all that practical for home internet usage. The plans also looked pretty bad with T-Mobile offering Home Internet with unlimited data for $50/month with a credit check. Although T-Mobile's offering requires a credit check, the same plan was made available without a credit check to Metro by T-Mobile phone plan customers.
Another possible reason for the plans being discontinued might have to do with T-Mobile's pending acquisition of Ultra Mobile and Mint Mobile. Given the astronomical price of the home internet plans and their limited data allotments, I surmise they may actually be more profitable for T-Mobile to offload those customers to another one of their MVNOs. T-Mobile unlimited data 5G home internet customers are far more likely to use more data per dollar than a limited data plan with a much higher price tag from a home internet MVNO. Some of Ultra's home internet customers may also be less likely or able to convert over to a T-Mobile home internet plan if a credit check is required, so offloading them to a prepaid MVNO may be more practical rather than losing them outright to another network.
If you are impacted by Ultra Mobile discontinuing its home internet offerings, you may want to have a look at this list of data only plans, or visit this website for a comparison of 5G home internet plans.