Cricket will be the first carrier in the U.S. to offer pre-paid iPhones. Move over AT&T, Verizon and Sprint! Leap Wireless, (the parent company for Cricket), announced that starting June 22nd, you can purchase an iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S for $400-$500 respectively. Better news yet is that for just $55 a month gets users unlimited voice and text and up to 2.3GB of data service per month. (After 2.3GB, Cricket throttles down bandwidth, but doesn’t cut customers off.) Additionally, with Cricket there is no contract. This can save you substantial money over a two year period.
The real expense to owning a Smartphone isn’t in the price of the phone. The wallet drainer is the service plan. For example, to use an iPhone on Verizon’s 2 year contract, you will pay anywhere from $69-$169 per month, depending on your plan. Cricket’s $55 flat rate sounds pretty good compared to that. According to an article written by Geoff Duncan, digitaltrends, "During the course of the contract, customers wind up paying thousands of dollars to mobile operators. Sure, they can get out of those two-year deals, but wind up paying an early termination fee that covers the rest of the cost of their mobile handset. (Plus a little sugar for the carrier — kind of a last flip of the bird to a customer who has the nerve to defect.) It’s not unusual to have to pay $350 to get out of a Smartphone contract."
Here is breakdown of Duncan’s comparison of costs.
The table is a tad misleading. The upper range in the right hand column giving the total two year cost includes the price of the iPhone as well as the most expensive data plan available from that carrier. Cricket estimates that the average iPhone owner will pay $2775 for 2 years. According to Duncan’s article, "Last year, the Wall Street Journal estimated the average two-year cost of owning a Smartphone (not just an iPhone) is about $2,100 just for service, but consumers typically wind up closer to $3,400 over two years with fees, overages charges, and other costs. (And, we might add, that was before LTE.) So, for typical Smartphone users, one could argue Cricket’s pre-paid plans represent a rough savings of anywhere from $400 to as much as $1,600 over the course of two years."
Why isn’t Cricket offering the iPhone 3GS? Cricket network system is set up to operate on CDMA technology, not GSM. The iPhone 4 was the first iPhone to support CDMA. Apple isn’t going to backtrack and make the 3GS CDMA compatible.
Are you ready to drop your expensive carrier and sign up for Cricket? Be sure to check Cricket’s coverage. In my local area, Cricket is a no show. And according to Duncan’s article, even if Cricket is available in your area, if you travel a lot, support could be an issue. In many parts of the U.S. it can literally be hundreds of miles between Cricket corporate stores. Cricket does offer phone and Web-based support, however. Perhaps with Cricket getting the iPhone, the big carriers will consider dropping their monthly prices? Yeah, right…
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News from CultofMac, "Cricket Mobile’s recent announcement that they will be selling the iPhone 4 and 4S to prepaid customers (while offering enormous savings over traditional plans) seems to have started an avalanche, as now Sprint’s Virgin Mobile prepaid brand is reported to be following their lead. Virgin Mobile would presumably price their iPhone 4S plans using their Beyond Talk rates, which include unlimited texting and data, and start at $35 a month for 300 Anytime minutes, $45 a month for 1200 anytime minutes, and $55 a month for unlimited minutes. They would also presumably follow Cricket’s lead by offering the iPhone 4 for a mostly unsubsidized price of $399, and the iPhone 4S for $499."
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