It seems like just a few years ago, the only way to get great coverage with your cell phone was to sign a contract with AT&T, Verizon, Sprint or T-Mobile. But as more and more people are heading towards unlocked phones like the Nexus 4, we are seeing more and more MVNO’s pop up. There are a number of them that run on Sprint’s network, which is one reason why their network is so congested in some areas.
In June of this year, the free data provider, FreedomPop, announced that they had plans to release a no-cost phone service before the summer was out. Much like Blackberry, they too missed their goal. But it was only by about a week, so I guess we can’t complain too much now can we. On Tuesday, the company officially kicked off the free service beta program by offering up the refurbished HTC EVO Design for just $99. The EVO Design was available on Sprint almost 2 years ago. So it’s by no means a new device.
When a user signs up with FreedomPop and buys the HTC EVO Design, the user will get 200 voice minutes, 500 text messages and 500MB of data per month. FreedomPop is also planning to offer even more handsets to their lineup like the HTC EVO 4G. I would only expect handsets that have been available on Sprint in the past since FreedomPop does operate on Sprint’s network, their handsets will be limited to Sprint compatible handsets. Which can be good or bad, depending on how you look at it.
If this plan isn’t enough for you, you can always add more voice and texts for $10.99, but there’s no word, from their press release on how to add more data to your plan. FreedomPop is actually using VoIP to send all your calls and texts through a data connection. So you’re only using Sprint’s data network and not their voice network. So if you’ve got great coverage from Sprint, this is a carrier you may want to check out.