According to CoinDesk, Helium Mobile has updated its terms of service to require new subscribers to wait eight days before claiming any MOBILE tokens they are set to receive in exchange for sharing their location through Discovery Mapping. The change, effective from December 18, aims to combat growing pains in Helium's partially crowdsourced cellular network.
Since launching nationwide in early December, the low-cost phone plan has experienced a surge in new customers and interest in its unique mechanism for paying users in cryptocurrency. Helium Mobile's cell service operates on a combination of T-Mobile towers and Helium's own hotspots, hosted by individuals. Hotspot operators and phone subscribers who opt into Helium Mobile's location tracking service receive MOBILE tokens as payment.
Currently, subscribers using Discovery Mapping can earn over 2,000 MOBILE tokens per day, enough to cover the cost of Helium Mobile's $20 monthly subscription in just two days. The booming price of MOBILE, up over 2,000% this month, has attracted thousands of new customers to Helium Mobile and its mapping service. However, some customers were exploiting the system by farming MOBILE tokens for seven days, canceling the phone plan, and walking away with a full refund and potentially hundreds of dollars in MOBILE tokens. The new changes aim to prevent such abuse.