Cricket to launch budget-minded $30 service plan

[Shawn Knight]

Update: Cricket has confirmed that the new $30 plan does not qualify for the auto-pay discount.

Prepaid wireless service provider Cricket Wireless earlier this year launched an unlimited wireless plan that offers unlimited talk, text and data for $70 per month. On Thursday, the company announced a new plan that addresses the opposite end of the spectrum.

Beginning September 9 (tomorrow), Cricket will offer a new entry-level plan with unlimited talk, text and 1GB of high-speed 4G LTE data for $30 per month. This new plan joins the company’s other offerings - $40 for 2.5GB of data, $50 for 5GB of data and $60 for 10GB (plus the aforementioned unlimited plan at $70 per month).

Once you’ve exhausted your 4G LTE data in a given month, your speeds will be reduced to a maximum of 128kbps for the remainder of the billing cycle – standard practice among wireless providers these days.

Cricket also offers a $5 monthly discount if you set up auto-pay on your account. It’s unclear if this discount will be offered with the new 1GB plan but if so, you’d be looking at just $25 per month for service.

As you may know, Cricket operates as a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) / subsidiary of AT&T meaning all service is handled over AT&T’s network. The one big “catch,” if you will, is that Cricket limits download speeds to 8Mbps. That may sound slow but in the real world, you’ll likely hardly notice.

In fact, I’ve been using Cricket for nearly a year and half and couldn’t be happier. My bill is half of what it used to be with AT&T and I’m still on the same network (the best in my area as far as coverage and reliability go). If you’re looking to save a bit of cash each month, this would be a great place to start. You can even bring your own GSM smartphone from another carrier (provided it’s unlocked of course).

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https://www.techspot.com/news/66260-cricket-launch-budget-minded-30-service-plan.html

 

[andrewdoyle88]

As a Canadian, I almost have tears in my eyes reading any article to do with cell phone plans. I pay $80-100 for talk, text and 1GB of data. I don't know how our cell providers are allowed to have a monopoly while clearly price fixing.

 

[Evernessince]

I'm on republic wireless and only pay $20 / month for unlimited Talk, Text, and 1 GB of Data. This is without a contract and any data I don't use they refund me the dollar value of on my next bill. I usually end up paying $12-14. The coverage is pretty good too. I don't know why people in my area bother with verizon for $50 / month plus a contract.

 

[bmw95]

As a Canadian, I almost have tears in my eyes reading any article to do with cell phone plans. I pay $80-100 for talk, text and 1GB of data. I don't know how our cell providers are allowed to have a monopoly while clearly price fixing.

Ah geez yeah . I switched to my own plan on Telus recently, and noticed that if you buy your own phone and use their plans, it's only a $15 discount . . . equates to roughly $360 over the length of standard 2 year contract which is pretty garbage. Got an S7 with the plan but requires a monthly plan of about $100 :\

 

[IAMTHESTIG]

I'm on republic wireless and only pay $20 / month for unlimited Talk, Text, and 1 GB of Data. This is without a contract and any data I don't use they refund me the dollar value of on my next bill. I usually end up paying $12-14. The coverage is pretty good too. I don't know why people in my area bother with verizon for $50 / month plus a contract.

I just switched to RW... with two lines I was spending $88/mo with TMo and now I'm down to average of $26 a month for the same amount of data. Sprint network has been decent enough...

This Cricket plan isn't bad either... but at least in our area AT&T network is terrible.

 

[Evernessince]

I just switched to RW... with two lines I was spending $88/mo with TMo and now I'm down to average of $26 a month for the same amount of data. Sprint network has been decent enough...

This Cricket plan isn't bad either... but at least in our area AT&T network is terrible.

They actually just released new phones which have access to AT&T and Sprint. If you are having coverage issues they might help you out, although they do not have the republic refund like the other phones.

 

[enemys]

This is one of the moments that make me feel happy I live in Poland. I pay less than $10 a month for unlimited calls, texts and about 10GB of data (with full LTE speeds). And the unused bandwidth adds up on the following months, which means my data limit is about 30 gigabytes now .

...Then I recall that while mobile plans are a couple times cheaper than everywhere else, phones are like 2 to 4 times more expensive in relation to average salary. Well, I guess you can't have everything.

 

[petert]

Yeah - is so sad down there that when the prices drops down just a little bit, they need to make it breaking news. Here in Europe we would label such article as shameless advertisement- but hey - things are different.