Cricket readies itself for higher bandwidth customers

Really, this announcement is just a lead-in. While they haven’t added any multimedia services, per se, to their current offerings, Cricket Communications has partnered with Starent Networks for use of their multimedia core platform solution. This gives Cricket the ability to deliver a wide range of multimedia products to its subscribers. This is one area in which they have been lacking. While it’s great to have a flat-rate, unlimited calling plan, people are starting to use their phones for more than just talking and texting. So it appears Cricket is prepared to fulfill that need.

“The vast majority of Cricket customers use their mobile phones as their primary or only phone. Our customers are dependent on their phones, and they look to us to provide always-on service with a variety of the latest features and applications,” said Chris Demange, Cricket’s director of network engineering and development. “By deploying Starent Network’s solutions, we are better preparing ourselves to handle the increasing demand for high bandwidth services. Starent Network’s solutions offer our network a high degree of intelligence that helps bolster the quality of our service offerings at a time whenquality of service is at issue with so many mobile users.”

Currently, Cricket only has SMS, MMS, and a few games to choose from. Other applications are out of the question, though with this announcement we could see some offerings in early 2008. So it looks like Leap’s financial woes won’t keep it from staying cutting-edge. They need all the help they can get, with MetroPCS going strong and Boost Unlimited taking the market by storm. Let’s hope this keeps Cricket afloat for a while. [TMCnet]]]>