Cricket makes sweeping changes, adds handsets

Cricket wireless‘s press event today is of where to begin. They had quite the busy day, announcing new voice and data plans, plus a few new handsets. Since there’s little we didn’t already know on the device side, let’s start with the plans. Cricket will now feature four different monthly unlimited plans, each of which provides a different level of service. The prices are final. That is, the $35 plan covers the plan and all associated fees. The only thing it doesn’t cover is sales tax, if applicable. After the jump we’ll have the whole gamut.

$35 Basic Plan $45 More Plan $55 Android Plan $60 BlackBerry Plan Voice Nationwide talk Long distance Voicemail Nationwide talk Long distance Voicemail Voice features Call forwarding Nationwide talk Long distance Voicemail Voice features Call forwarding Nationwide talk Long distance Voicemail Voice features Call forwarding Messaging Nationwide text Nationwide text Pix Video International text Nationwide text Pix Video International text Email Nationwide text Pix Video International text BlackBerry Email Blackberry Messenger Data & Entertainment Mobile Web Mobile Web/full HTML Android Market Wi-Fi Mobile Web/full HTML BlackBerry App World Wi-Fi Premium 411 Data Backup Navigation Data Backup Data Backup

Essentially, light users can get by with the $35 plan, which will cover all of their talk and text needs. The $45 plan will cover the light web user, ones who use it to check sports scores and other little things. The navigation and 411 features are pretty nice, too. Then, as you can see, there is a plan for Android and there is a plan for BlackBerry. Any data-heavy user can get on the $55 Android plan, even if it’s not an Android device. For a more visual look, here’s how they’re displaying it on the website: Now here comes the surprise. Cricket has entered into a wholesale agreement with Sprint, which turns them into a hybrid carrier of sorts. They have their own network, but will use the Sprint 3G network to help supplement that coverage. This opens up even more markets to the regional carrier — is it now safe to say once-regional carrier? The two will continue the relationship as long as Cricket delivers the business. Given their announcements today, I think that this could be the beginning of a long friendship. Finally, we get to the handsets. These go last because we know about most of them. For instance, the Sanyo Zio by Kyocera presale has been open since late July. Furthermore, we knew that they’d get the BlackBerry Curve 8530, a device that MetroPCS recently added. We now have a release date for that one: this Friday, August 6th. Then there are the less exciting, but still useful, feature phones. We saw that the MSGM8 II passed through the FCC last week, and that was on Cricket’s list of announcements. Also announced was the Samsung CAPTR II and the Samsung Messager Touch, though the latter will be available a bit later than the rest. This was simply a huge day for Leap Wireless and Cricket. It should give them a strong foothold in the industry. All of their announcements represent positive developments for the company. Maybe now we’ll stop hearing about the inevitability of a Cricket-Metro merger. (On second thought, nah.)]]>