There were a lot of people who were excited when prepaid wireless carrier Leap Wireless, who operates the Cricket Wireless mobile phone brand, announced that it would be offering the iPhone 5. I think a bunch of people forgot that carriers like AT&T and Verizon offer big subsidies to get people to purchase the phones and sign up for new contracts. A network like Cricket Wireless that offers no subsidies requires you to pay for the entire device up front.
In the case of Leap Wireless and Cricket Wireless, that meant users needed to pay at least $500 for an iPhone 5. Many of the customers who shop prepaid carriers are looking for no contract and budget phones. It never seemed likely to me that they’d be willing to cough up $500 for a smartphone. It appears I was correct because Leap has announced that it believes it may end up with $100 million worth of unsold iPhones by the middle of 2013.
The company says that it is on pace to sell only half the number of iPhones that it committed to sell during the first year of its Apple contract. That contract is set to end in June and the poor sales comes despite the fact that Apple previously allowed the wireless carrier to sell the iPhone at a reduced price when compared to unlocked iPhones. Leap’s inability to sell the iPhone could make some of the national carriers such as Verizon and AT&T seriously reconsider their plans to reduce any subsidies on smartphones.
[via WSJ]
Cricket's parent company, Leap Wireless, announced earlier last week its intentions to start blanketing more customers with LTE service, though it didn't say which markets would be the ones to get the same experience as folks in Tucson, Arizona. Today, however, Cricket's claiming that subscribers in the Las Vegas area can finally get a taste of savory Long Term Evolution, making this the second market where the newfangled network's now present. To go along with this, Cricket has said a revamped, LTE-ready version of that $150 Huawei Boltz modem will be available online and at retail stores around Sin City (and Tucson) for customers eager to try out the new service. No word on when the carrier plans to bring its "true 4G" network elsewhere, but, according to Leap CEO Doug Hutcheson, the idea is to have "approximately 21 million covered POPs by the end of the year."
[Image credit: Cricket Wireless Premier Dealer]
Continue reading Cricket brings 4G LTE to Las Vegas, outs new Huawei Boltz modem in celebration
Filed under: Cellphones, Misc, Wireless, Mobile
Cricket brings 4G LTE to Las Vegas, outs new Huawei Boltz modem in celebration originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Oct 2012 14:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink |
Cricket | Email this | Comments 
Leap customers, go ahead and jump for joy. The CDMA-based carrier is finally rolling out its first LTE market next week after about a year of testing it in Tucson, Arizona. (The first official market has yet to be named, however.) With its spectrum swaps finally complete, Leap hopes to spread LTE to around 21 million POPs by the end of this year and to around two-thirds of its current network by the end of 2015. Its only LTE offering is a Huawei Boltz mobile hotspot, but it promises LTE-capable smartphones soon. Curiously, the carrier does offer the LTE-capable iPhone 5, but there's no word if Leap's LTE network will support it. The only nationwide carrier without LTE at this point is T-Mobile, though it has promised rollouts starting next year; here's hoping that merger with MetroPCS (which already has LTE) will hurry that along.
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile
Leap finally gets LTE, rollout starts next week originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Oct 2012 16:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink
PhoneScoop | Fierce Wireless | Email this | Comments 
Leap Wireless can go ahead and pop the champagne, as it has just completed the spectrum transactions announced earlier this year that will hopefully lead to larger LTE growth. Leap's own Savary Island Wireless exchanged spectrum with T-Mobile USA and Cook Inlet/VS GSM VII PCS LLC (itself a T-Mo business), resulting in Cricket's parent company acquiring 10MHz of additional AWS spectrum in Phoenix, AZ and Houston, Galveston and Bryan-College Station, TX, among others. In return, T-Mobile received spectrum in various markets in Alabama, Illinois, Missouri, Minnesota and Wisconsin. There are also several intra-market exchanges in Philadelphia, Wilmington, Atlantic City, New Mexico, and Texas. In addition to the spectrum exchange, Leap also formally acquired the entirety of Savary Island Wireless for around $5.3 million (It previously only owned an 85 percent share) so the company has even more cause for celebration. Just don't overindulge on the Cristal, okay Leap?
Continue reading Leap Wireless swaps spectrum with T-Mobile, buys all of Savary Island
Filed under: Wireless, Mobile, T-Mobile
Leap Wireless swaps spectrum with T-Mobile, buys all of Savary Island originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Oct 2012 01:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink |Leap Wireless | Email this | Comments 
We recently caught first sight of the ZTE Engage at a press event in New York, but while Cricket was more than happy to let us play with its latest smartphone, the carrier stopped short of providing us with its pricing or arrival date. All of that changed this afternoon, as we now know that the ZTE Engage will become available on October 2nd with a no-contract price of $250. As a quick refresher, the handset will feature a near-stock Android 4.0 environment and a Snapdragon S2 SoC with a CPU that's clocked at 1.4GHz. Other relevant specs include a 4-inch WVGA (800 x 480) TFT-LCD display, an 8-megapixel rear camera with a VGA front-facing counterpart and a 1,900mAh battery. For complete details, you'll find the full PR right after the break.
Continue reading ZTE Engage cleared to land at Cricket on October 2nd for $250
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile
ZTE Engage cleared to land at Cricket on October 2nd for $250 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Sep 2012 21:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | Comments 
RadioShack might have had a difficult time keeping a lid on its partnership with Cricket, but that doesn't mean we aren't interested in the official news. Launching under the expected RadioShack No-Contract Wireless banner, the unfettered phone service includes lets shoppers pick either $25 or $35 plans for basic feature phones or, more importantly, some tempting $50 and $60 smartphone plans. On top of unlimited domestic voice and messaging, these last two rates offer a respective 1GB and 2.5GB of data before throttling kicks in, with hotspot support, international text messaging and visual voicemail reserved for the highest-end tier. You'll find just two Huawei phones if you wander into a RadioShack store for the Wednesday launch: the $40 Pillar, a keyboard-touting basic phone, and a white-tinged, $150 Mercury Ice that iterates on the Android 2.3-toting Mercury only in the change of color. We're promised two additional, unnamed phones before the end of the month, and smartphones on the No-Contract service will be the only Cricket devices shipping with 8GB microSDHC cards to feed that Muve Music habit. The nitty-gritty of the hardware and plans await after the break.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile
Cricket and RadioShack confirm No-Contract Wireless, ship two Huawei phones to celebrate originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Sep 2012 19:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | Comments 
From today, Cricket is bundling its all-you-can-listen Muve Music service as a standard part of its Android smartphone plans. The offering gives users unlimited text, picture and video messaging, mobile web and a big catalog of banging beats you can pull down to your phone for those impromptu tap dancing sessions. The plans start at $50 a month, and you can access the sonic buffet if you pick up the Huawei Mercury, Ascend Q and Ascend II, HTC One V, Samsung Vitality or the ZTE Chorus. After all, if it's included in the price, you might as well, eh?
Continue reading Cricket now including Muve Music on all new Android smartphone plans
Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Audio/Video, Mobile
Cricket now including Muve Music on all new Android smartphone plans originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Aug 2012 05:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | Comments 
Go ahead and put a bow on it, as Verizon Wireless and Leap Wireless (the parent company of Cricket), have announced a successful spectrum swap. The agreement follows the recent stamp of approval from the FCC, which was issued as part of a larger deal between Verizon Wireless, SpectrumCo and Cox. For its part, Leap will divest itself of excess AWS and PCS spectrum across the US; in exchange, Verizon will pay $120 million to Leap and provide it with 12MHz of A Block 700MHz spectrum in Chicago. Leap will use the new holdings to supplement its existing 10MHz of the A Block within the Windy City, and will use the cash to build up its LTE infrastructure across the US. The company currently expects to provide LTE coverage to at least two-thirds of Cricket's current footprint over the next three years -- or, maybe sooner. Just check the PR to watch the company waffle.
Verizon and Leap Wireless announce $120 million spectrum swap in wake of FCC approval originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Aug 2012 18:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | Comments 
We're just about a week out from the rumored launch of RadioShack's Cricket-based No Contract Wireless plans, and more details are beginning to trickle out about the prepaid service. Specifically, we've just received information concerning how much The Shack intends to charge on a monthly basis, and it's just about what you'd expect: you can choose between featurephone and smartphone options, with the former hooking you up with unlimited messaging and your choice of 300 minutes for $25 or 1,000 minutes for $35. As for the smartphone plans, you'll get unlimited voice, messaging and Muve Music downloads on both selections; the $50 option will get you one gigabyte of 3G data (before throttling ensues), while $60 bestows you with 2.5GB data and mobile hotspot use, Visual Voicemail access, unlimited international text and all-you-can-eat directory assistance.
As a comparison, Cricket's $35 featurephone plan will give you unlimited voice and SMS, compared to 1,000 minutes and unlimited SMS / MMS / 1X data on The Shack. The carrier's basic smartphone option is $55 and offers unlimited voice, messaging and 3G data (throttled at 2.5GB); this may seem like the better deal -- unless you're interested in using Muve Music. Since you have to pay an extra $10 to add the unlimited music service into the mix on Cricket, you'll see a monthly savings of $5 if you waltz into The Shack for the top-tiered plan. We're still waiting for RadioShack to come clean and acknowledge the existence of the NoContract service, but we'll continue to reveal more details as they come down the pipeline. Check out the featurephone rate plans after the break.
[Thanks, Anonymous!]
Continue reading RadioShack No Contract Wireless rate plans leak, $60 will get you everything
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile
RadioShack No Contract Wireless rate plans leak, $60 will get you everything originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Aug 2012 12:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | Comments