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If you ever said to yourself, “Man, you’d have to pay me to use Cricket” today’s your day. The now AT&T owned prepaid carrier is offering up a $100 credit to anyone who leaves T-Mobile or MetroPCS (also owned by T-Mobile) for up to 5 lines.
Those crazy enough to switch to Cricket from T-Mobile, heaven help you. With JUMP early upgrades, free music streaming, free data roaming, and all the other recent moves T-Mobile has been making in recent months, it’s easy to see where I choose to spend my money. But because no 2 people have the same wireless needs, you may find saving a few bucks upfront with Cricket’s cheaper monthly rates and new promo to be a bit more enticing. Cricket’s deal is valid until October 19th and will only work for those porting their number to one of Cricket’s available Basic, Smart, or Pro plans.
This new move shouldn’t come as much of a surprise considering AT&T officially purchased Cricket earlier this year for $1.19 billion which, to be fair, greatly expanded Cricket’s footprint from their CDMA days of yore. Cricket and MetroPCS often go head-to-head in rural markets offering up affordable off-contract devices for those on a budget.
As a one time (and still bitter) Cricket customer, I’ll admit, current customers using newer GSM devices assure me things have changed since they’re now operating on AT&T’s network. Guess you’ll just have to take their word for it.
[Cricket]
Keep it coming… the more these guys go at each other, the more we win.
Unfortunately, no matter how much the smaller carriers compete, it doesn’t seem to be leveling out the size of the big 2, ATT & Vzn are still way, way too big. There needs to be a leveling out in the U.S. 2015 will continue to be interesting, but I don’t think competition will truly heat up against the big 2 until 2016 when 600mhz and LTE-Advanced gets deployed by T-Mobile, and they really market a more expanded network.
Bottom line, leveling out with the big 2 needs to happen, and that isn’t going to happen anytime soon.
Urban not rural areas and can’t pry my 70 unlimited everything or 60bdollar unlimited everything on metro not for 100
See my comment above. I pay $55 for unlimited everything.
When do you get throttled? Because I don’t when I say unlimited everything I mean it, no throttle.
I’ve never been throttled. Supposedly it’s at 5 GB, but my monthly usage averages between 2 and 3.5 GB.
My average usage is well beyond 20gbs a month
Wow, that’s quite a bit of data for a mobile device. That said, my usage is so much lower because I’m on WiFi when I’m at work and at home, so vast majority of my connectivity doesn’t go over the mobile network. If I was using the mobile data exclusively, I would probably be somewhere north of 6 GB. The biggest data hogs on my device tend to be music streaming apps, i.e. Google Play Music, BubbleUPnP, and Amazon Music.
Dude what the hell Lmao.? 20 GB…. You must either never be home or don’t have wifi
I don’t have WiFi, and when I am not home there is no WiFi or their WiFi is slower than my LTE, if I wanna use my desktop or laptop I tether then my usage soars past 60 to 70 gbs a month. Don’t be hating
Bro Lmao that’s insane. What service do you have that allows you to do that
T-Mobile, and when I was on metro PCs…metro pcs… Of course I am a Linux over windows user so that helps
This is is from just a few days on my new device, mostly YouTube Netflix and google which is nearly two gbs its self
Same here. Been with aio/cricket for almost a year I’ve only reached the throttle once and that was when I had 2 GB of high speed data. Ever since I switched to the 5 GB I have yet to reach it.
What hold on now. I’ve had Aio/Cricket for almost a year and its been pretty damn good especially reliability wise. Coverage is excellent. Only thing I can say is the LTE speeds are not amazing but I never understood why anyone need 20 Mbps down on a phone anyway. But I pay 55 a month for 5 GB of High-speed data. Best deal and I’ve been to all the MVNOs besides Solavei. Also their customer service is A+ ESPECIALLY compared to the god awful straight talk CS
I came here to say pretty much exactly this. I feel the poster of this article has ZERO personal experience about Cricket to make a claim like “may heaven help you” in regards to the service. I’ve been ON contract with Sprint and T-Mobile for my last two carriers – and Cricket is far superior in terms of overall coverage and consistency. I consider myself a heavier-than-average mobile user as well.
Yes, the 5 GB cap isn’t my favorite in the world (I would pay them a higher price for more bandwidth) but for $55 FLAT every month it is a sweet deal. T-Mobile was utterly horrible for me once I stepped foot outside of any major city. As in zero coverage you are F’d kind of horrible.
I would gladly give Cricket $65 or even $75 per month if they would up the ante and give me more data. Love ’em!
Exactly. At my schools campus T-Mobile is still running edge which laughable. I listen to ESPN radio on my commute to work and when I had T-Mobile it dropped my signal about every 5 mins. I had sprint and their data was extremely slow. So I agree with you this post is either talking about the old CDMA cricket and not the new ATT mvno cricket or just talking with no basis
“If you’re crazy enough to switch to Cricket from T-Mobile may heaven help you” … say what?! If I’m not mistaken, Cricket uses AT&T’s network which is far superior coverage wise to Tmobile. Chavez, I expect more out of you. In my area – I’d take Cricket / AIO / StraightTalk / AT&T any day over Tmo’s non existent (at least here in my state) coverage.
Its not just your state cause I live in metro Atlanta and T-Mobile coverage is spot at best and once you get even the least bit outside of “metro atl” your f%&$#*.
Umm, Cricket is the former AIO Wireless, and as such is essentially AT&T without contracts. I switched to them from T-Mobile back in March and while I like what T-Mobile has been doing, I have to say that so far this has been a better deal for me. For $55/month I get unlimited everything on AT&T’s much larger LTE network. Badmouthing Cricket might have been fashionable back when they were a tiny CDMA regional carrier, but those days are gone.
You won’t get faster than 8mbps if that’s important to you. Att throttles all cricket users. Hspa users get even slower speeds than that as a cap.
It is true that the connection is throttled at 8 mbit, but for all practical purposes that’s completely irrelevant. I don’t have a single use case for my phone that would need anything faster. Web pages load plenty fast, and even streaming video from my Sling Box HD looks great. It is far more important to me to have strong coverage in rural areas so that applications like Google Maps can function reliably. The connection is on LTE for the first 5 GB, but again, I’ve never come close to using that much in a month. (my average usage tends to be between 2 and 3.5 GB/month) All things considered, it’s a great service at a competitive price for a Nexus 5 user like myself.
I get 16 mbps on my z10 no throttle here you’re wrong!
SARASOTA FL
CRICKET WIRELESS
“Those crazy enough to switch to Cricket from T-Mobile, heaven help you. ”
As the comments show this statement is dated. Same towers as at&t but only $35 a month. I never tried cricket before my carrier aio got rebranded.
Prior to being bought by AT&T, Cricket was awful. I’ve used them in the past, and always had issues. Still, I was fed up with Virgin, and with the Moto G on sale, went to Cricket, and the difference in service is night and day.
I won’t lie… it’s compelling. I didn’t think I’d ever see the day that I could bounce around carriers for such good deals.
Some of y’all are taking what he wrote out of context. He’s saying with all the things T Mobile offer, why would you switch. He’s not talking about the quality of service. I would assume he knows that AT&T bought Cricket and they now run on AT&T towers.
This article has been edited a few times since it was originally posted. It wasn’t worded that way before. I guess I expect bias from reader comments but not from the writers of the articles themselves. Tmobile has made good moves no doubt – but to me, reliability and coverage area trump perks like free music streaming from specific providers… which in my opinion is really walking the “net neutrality” line.
Ahh Ok, that explains why people are up in arms over this article.
If I didn’t have to buy the sim card for so much I would switch. I’ve been using straight talk AT&T sim and I love the coverage. I can deal with getting throttled to 8mb since I get between 5-14 already I wouldn’t know the difference. That extra data looks good right now
AT&T surpasses that of T-Mobile coverage. I live in the country and work in the city and have coverage on my entire commute.
Check the at&t coverage map that’s your coverage.
I have cricket 5 lines unlimited calling text +500mb high-speed unlimited 3g. On one line I have 6gb high speed & 120 a month can’t beat that.
Each line is $45 with -$10 for each addition line so the ssecond line is $35, then $25 etc. for the first four lines the fifth line is also $15.