Cricket Wireless is a small mobile phone and data company that operates wireless data networks in Nashville, Spokane, the Central Valley of California, Santa Fe/Albuquerque, and Portland, Oregon. If you happen to be in their market, they’ll sell you an EVDO Rev O modem—PC card only for now, but a USB version is coming—with truly unlimited wireless data access with uncapped usage for just $35 a month.
Company Page [MyCricket.com via Gearlog]
To be fair, they operate in a lot more markets than that. Unfortunately, it appears their data service is only offered in those 5 select areas. That wasn’t really apparent in this entry.
The catch with Cricket, while their a la carte plans look good, is that there actual in-network coverage area is relatively miniscule and they then ding you for fairly hefty roaming fees. In fairness, however, it would appear that for this plan they simply do not allow roaming usage, period.
~V
Better yet, check out Sprint’s semi-secret SERO plans… Such as $30/month for 500 peak minutes of voice and unlimited EVDO data, among other perks.
I recently moved from Southern California to the Central Valley. My wireless provider is at&t, they have yet to build their 3g network in this area. (Supposedly it’ll be here by July) anyway. I was looking at getting this service in the interim (since there’s no contract) But I haven’t seen any reviews yet for it, and the cricket booth I went to in the local mall didn’t even have a demo available.
Would the USB card work on a Macbook Air? (I live in one of their areas and would kill for wireless everywhere on an Air, which is something I find sorely lacking on it).