No one hates MLMs more than I do and I would never recommend someone sign up with the intention of getting rich from one because that never works.
The principal reason that does not work is because the products they hawk are usually below average in quality and way more expensive than what's out there so they never sell well. The only way to make money is from referrals.
So no, I would never recommend anyone sign up for Solavei if climbing the pyramid for money is the goal. It's just not going to happen and all the time and money you will spend trying to get recruits and sales is not going to pay off.
Think about it, at $20 per month income for every 3 sign ups, you would need to sign up 450 people (who all would have to remain as subscribers) in order to earn an income of $3,000 a month - which I'd consider bare minimum for a half decent full time income.
If you contacted a bunch of people and signed up one per day, it would take you more than a year to do that. During that year you'd be making far less money than a regular job and you will be spending money on traveling, flyers, meetings, events, etc. that you will have to put on to make sales. Chances are with the expenses mounting, it would be a long while before you got your investment back (especially if you include opportunity cost of forgoing legitimate jobs or business opportunities). Overall, not a good deal.
So in conclusion, I agree that the company is MLM-scammy if you are looking at it from the perspective of a business opportunity.
Now why doesn't Verizon do this or some other company? Because they are willing to spend hundreds of millions on ads. Solavei prefers to spend money on giving discounts to people who make referrals. If many people who sign up early get 3 or 6 referrals so that they can get a $20-$40 discount, their user base will grow rapidly. Same effect as buying TV ads and what not, except here they only pay when they get results. It's a good deal from Solavei's perspective.
From the clients' perspective it's good too because you get a bit of a discount. However, turning it into a full time income generating proposition is definitely not going to work, as explained above.
WITH THAT SAID, if all you want is $49 a month phone service as a customer, looks like you can sign up, pay the $49 a month, and get unlimited text and voice and 4GB of web before you get throttled, all on the T-Mobile network.
The $149 fee you mention does not apply if you are a subscriber to the network. You also are not required to buy or spend anything else other than pay your $49 phone bill to maintain service. So basically you can shut all that MLM stuff out of it and just treat it like another phone company if you want.
That is a pretty good deal which only Walmart's StraighTalk (which throttles you sooner at around 2GB and has funky terms of service) can match.