Cricket looking at new broadband pricing

Cricket has its cellular coverage and plans covered, it’s time to move onto their broadband plans. Phil Goldstein of FierceWireless reports that Cricket is performing tests in select markets for three new broadband plans. These offer pretty large data caps, which will satisfy heavy users. This goes hand in hand with a discussion I had in 2008 with Greg Lund, head of corporate communications with Cricket. He mentioned how many people were using the Cricket mobile broadband service as their primary home internet connection. These new plans help further enable these customers, while allowing lower rates for lighter users. The highest tier plan costs $60 per month and provides 10GB of data at up to 1.4 Mbps. That’s a pretty good deal, doubling the data cap set by most other major wireless broadband providers. Heavy home users will get the most out of this plan. The one I don’t get, and the one I think will be eliminated, is the $50 plan that provides 5GB of data at 1.4 Mbps. That’s just $10 cheaper than the 10GB plan, yet provides half the data usage. I think that most customers will find it economical to pay the extra $10 per month. Finally, a $40 offering provides 2.5GB, good for lighter users. The only downside is that it only offers up to 600 Kbps. Again, I’m not so sure about this one. People who will tolerate such a low transfer rate probably don’t need 2.5GB per month. I’d like to see this one bumped down a bit, maybe to $30 for 1GB at 600 Kbps, while the 5GB plan gets bumped down a bit, too, maybe to $45. That, I think, will more evenly distribute the usage of each plan. Cricket is conducting tests to this end, so we’ll see what they find. ]]>