Cricket does unlimited EVDO data for less
By Will Park on Sunday, March 23rd, 2008 at 3:23 PM PST In Announcements, Services
The word of the month seems to be “unlimited,” and we’re loving it. With wireless carriers battling to match or beat their competitors’ pricing schedules with all-you-can-eat, flat-rate, unlimited calling/data plans, it’s the consumer that ultimately comes out on top. The latest wireless operator to adopt the “buffet-style” pricing scheme that’s rolling through the country is Cricket. The little-guy carrier covers small-time, ho-dunk regions so their unlimited data offering isn’t going to get too many mouths salivating.
Still, if you happen to live in like Portland, Spokane, Albuquerque, or Central California, Cricket is offering an unlimited EVDO data plan for just $35. The offer includes as many megabytes you can digest at EVDO Rev. 0 rates – not the Rev. A data-rates that have been glorified of late. Still, at just $35, the unlimited data plan is a relative bargain. Especially considering that there’s no hidden limit on Cricket’s unlimited data plan (ahem, Verizon (NYSE: VZ)).
“We expect our customers will be heavy, heavy data users, and we’ve never thought limits were a good idea,” said Cricket senior manager for corporate communications Greg Lund.
There’s only a single PC card data-card as of now, but we should be seeing more data-hardware offerings soon.
Unfortunately, being the small-time regional carrier that they are, we don’t think Cricket’s unlimited data plan offering is going to spark any renewed price wars between the Big Three in the US.
[Via: BGR]
Cricket in Las Vegas and some of the other news articles on Google indicate that Cricket’s network in Las Vegas is EVDO rev. A. In fact, they do not sell the rev. 0 card shown in this article in Las Vegas, but rather a USB-plug from UTStarcom that does support rev. A where available. The online user manual for the device indicates it supports 1xRTT, EvDO and EvDO rev.A. It sounds like additional research is needed by this author and a retraction/correction needs to be printed, since this might be damaging Cricket’s sales.