Helium Mobile’s free plan is no longer free for anyone

The haters said that a free mobile plan from one carrier wouldn’t be sustainable, and they were right. Honestly, great decision from the haters. Helium Mobile made a splash last year with its Zero Plan, which offers a limited amount of data, texts and calls with no monthly fee at a time when even cheap phone plans usually still involve, you know, paying for them. It already stopped offering the plan to new customers last month and now the free ride appears to be ending for existing subscribers as well.

As detailed The mobile reportHelio Móvil has emailed to Plan Zero customers to inform you that the plan will be suspended on June 11. The company reportedly told subscribers that the free plan is “not sustainable in the long term” and that customers who don’t take action will be automatically moved to Helium’s $15/month air plan. After we reported last month that Helium had stopped offering Plan Zero to new subscribers, the operator told us that “existing Zero plan subscribers are not affected.” According to this latest email, they largely are.

Plan Zero originally launched with 3GB of data, 300 texts, and 100 minutes of free calling, which was always a bold proposition in the US carrier market. The plan had already lost some of its original luster earlier this year when Helium began requiring customers to keep a card on file to cover taxes and fees. The airline also ended its old $5 and $20 plans, despite earlier promises that customers would be able to keep them as long as they remained customers. That context makes this latest change seem a little more sinister about what might be going on behind the scenes.

The mobile report also notes some Reddit reaction to the move, including a screenshot showing a user apparently banned from r/HeliumMobile after suggesting that a class-action lawsuit could follow. Clearly, the change isn’t working well for some of the people who signed up for the free plan, and Helium may be in firefighting mode.

If you are a Plan Zero customer, you have less than three weeks to act or risk being moved to a paid plan. Free was fun while it lasted, but Helium Mobile now looks set to find out how many Plan Zero users are still interested once the price is no longer zero.