Cricket Wireless, a regional pre-paid cellular carrier, announces they’re adding the iPhone 4 and 4S to its offerings, starting June 22. Just as the company priced other smartphones on their service, the iPhone will cost a flat $55 per month for unlimited talk, text and data (with a “fair usage” policy of 2.3 GB of data per month enforced by throttling users’ speed back when they exceed this limit).
Unfortunately, the lack of a contract also means customers can’t expect Cricket to sell iPhones with deep subsidies applied. An 8 GB iPhone 4 has a purchase price of $400, while the more desirable 16 GB iPhone 4S will set buyers back $500. These prices appear to be $150 cheaper than buying unlocked iPhones directly from Apple, so Cricket may actually be discounting them a bit. The problem is, many of Cricket’s typical customers include the elderly on fixed incomes and younger customers with limited budgets. These prices are roughly $250 to $350 more expensive than smartphones Cricket sold in the past.
On the other hand, Cricket is partnered with Sprint, giving customers nationwide coverage. Perhaps the addition of the iPhone will allow Cricket to convert more users of major carriers as they end (or opt to break) their contracts. Notably, T-Mobile customers still can’t buy an iPhone on their network, so maybe it’s time for them to hop over to the cheep-cheep carrier who does?
[…] it will add the iPhone 4 and 4S to their handset offerings as of June 29. This comes scant days after Cricket Wireless, another pre-pay giant, made a similar announcement. All this pre-pay action is making some of us […]