Leap Wireless is one of America’s smaller operators. Most people recognize them as “Criket Communications“. They don’t lock customers into 2 year contracts, nor do they insist on credit checks, so they’re prefect for those who want service on a month by month basis. Right now they have a 3G network that uses CDMA technology and they’ve got a handful of markets that also do EV-DO for higher speed data access. So what’s their 4G strategy, now that all the cool kids are hyping their 4G networks to the point of annoyance? Leap has chosen to go with LTE, and they’ll have a network up and running by the end of this year, but there’s a catch. They’re not going to offer any actual LTE devices until the second half of 2012. Why is that? “We think devices will really hit critical pricing in the second half of 2012,” said Leap CEO Doug Hutcheson.
The man’s got a point. Shove LTE into a smartphone and the cost skyrockets. It’s why there’s only one LTE smartphone on the market, the HTC Thunderbolt, and while it’s only $250 straight from Verizon, you are required to be locked into a 2 year contract during which you’re going to have to suffer abysmal battery life and buggy software. It’s going to take a full year and a half for any decent LTE devices to hit the market, which we hope includes the iPhone 6, so it goes without saying that the best plan of attack for Leap is to launch a network, build it out, and then when the time is right offer service to their ~ 4.5 million customers. MetroPCS is another one of the smaller players and they too just launched an LTE network, but their selection of devices to actually support it is pathetically lame. They’ve got a Samsung feature phone, and it sells for $400, not exactly the most appealing thing on the market.