Today, Sprint announced that they are the first US partner for Pokemon GO. This comes just days before Niantic is set to release new Pokemon in the game. Which Sprint essentially confirmed is happening on December 12th. The new partnership between Sprint and Niantic means that customers visiting Sprint, Boost Mobile and Sprint at Radioshack stores around the US will get a special Pokemon GO experience. According to Sprint, this special experience includes the ability to collect in-game items for Pokemon GO, like Poke Balls, Eggs and much more. There will also be Sprint-sponsored Gyms, where trainers can go and battle other Pokemon. On top of that, trainers are able to head into any of these locations and recharge their phones for free. Which is essential when playing Pokemon GO.
Sprint’s CEO, Marcelo Claure noted in a prepared statement that “this collaboration with Pokemon GO brings together two innovative, groundbreaking and creative brands that will offer Trainers greater accessibility and destinations to advance their game.”Claure also went onto talk about how Pokemon GO is one of the most popular mobile games in recent history and how Sprint will be able to keep it a popular game by making their stores part of the game. Meanwhile, Niantic’s CEO, John Hanke, was excited about their first US partnership. Stating that this partnership “provides an awesome experience to Pokemon GO Trainers.”
In their press release, Sprint also touts their unlimited data offerings. Stating that Pokemon GO Trainers won’t need to worry about going over their data limit when playing the game on Sprint’s 4G LTE network. Don’t forget that Sprint is also offering up three lines of unlimited talk, text and data for free. These lines will be free until January 31st, 2018 – however you need to add them before the end of this month. This effectively brings the monthly cost on down to about $20/month per line when you have five lines on your account. Sprint does “optimize” the data on their network, so you may see things be a bit slower than they should be, but for the most part, you won’t notice any differences with Pokemon GO, which is the important thing. Gaming is typically a bit slower, capped at about 1.5Mbps, which is more than enough for Pokemon GO as it doesn’t use a ton of data. Niantic will have some more announcements about Pokemon GO, starting December 12th.