We know what you might be thinking. WiMax? Isn’t that being phased out by Sprint by next year? Well, yes, but the technology is from ClearWire who still has WiMax that Millions of people have access to. One company that’s looking to take advantage of those networks is FreedomPop.
FreedomPop is a new provider of pay as you go data. They utilize ClearWire’s WiMax network and while they may not be as fast as 4G LTE, you’re not paying nearly as much in the first place which can be a definite plus. The good news is for those wanting even faster speeds, FreedomPop says that they’ll be transitioning to Sprint’s LTE network sometime in early 2013. So pretty much the same as Sprint’s plans to phase out WiMax.
In the meantime, if you’re in an area that has WiMax and you’re looking for a cheap data plan for your tablet, this may be right up your alley. Unfortunately, right now they only have USB sticks, hotspots, and covers for the iPhone or iPod that allow you to take advantage of the data. Since there’s 8 Gazillion different Android phones, this is no surprise.
While the service is basically free to a certain limit, the hotspot requires an $89 refundable deposit and the USB stick requires a $49 refundable deposit. As mentioned in the title of this post, you get 500MB of free WiMax data each month and if you need more than that, it’ll cost $10 for every gigabyte after that which isn’t bad one bit.
Also, FreedomPop has some neat ways to earn a bit of extra data without having to pay for it. For example, say you watch a 20 second ad, you’ll get three megabytes of extra data. Signing up for a trial to Netflix will net you 1.2GB and referring friends to Dropbox will earn you 10 extra megabytes each month that friend stays using it.
You can checkout FreedomPop here and see if it works in your area. While data plans continue to go up, it’s nice to see new services such as this pop up and offer an affordable price with decent speeds. Plus, with LTE coming, this service is sure to get even better come early next year.