FreedomPop Will Take On Carriers By Offering Smartphones And Freemium Phone Plan

http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/05/freedompop-free-phone-plan/

by maerek • 13 years ago

27 18 13 years ago

adlpz• 13 years ago

There has to be a trick here. I mean I understand a business model based in most customers consuming additional services (like the $10 voice plan), but I'd just go around with my pockets full of SIM cards for the iPad.

jonathanjaeger• 13 years ago

I got a FreedomPop 4G device when I was having Internet problems with Time Warner in my apartment. I needed more than the free 500MB and it gets pricey pretty quickly. They hope to subsidize the free data users with monetizing other offers. In actuality, there are a lot of scenarios using FreedomPop where you have to pay for something (whether it be a device, overage charges, speed boosts, etc.). It's a good product, but it's a little "too good to be true" when it comes to their wording, in my opinion. I've had some glitches trying to downgrade my account but their customer service has been helpful each time and fixed the issue.

joezydeco2• 13 years ago

I don't know if there's really a trick, just a business model counting on the fact that people will go over their free allotment.

I have a FreedomPop Rocket Sleeve that I use with an iTouch, had it for about a year now. I've never paid for more than the free 500MB bandwidth since I only use it in the rare times I'm out of a Wifi zone. And I'm pretty conservative with my data usage.

But FreedomPop is claiming 50% margin on their bandwidth, so I guess there are a lot of people buying more data. They must feel confident that this will carry on with the phones.

maxsilver• 13 years ago

FreedomPop primarily uses Clearwire's WiMax network.

Wholesale bandwidth is significantly cheaper on Clearwire than regular cell networks. (Clearwire gets an average revenue of $11 per user per month. Rumor is that their wholesale agreement with Sprint is roughly $1 per GB, or $10 per subscriber per month.)

If those numbers are true, then giving users 500mb free bandwidth might only cost FreedomPop as low as 50 cents per month per user.

tehwebguy• 13 years ago

Just signed up - they've got loads of premium plan add-ons and "partner offers" to give you more free monthly data.

Looks like a freemium model.

* Edit - Some more ways they make money:

- setting to automatically top your account off if you get below 100 MB left is on by default

- $0.99 maintenance fee if you use less than 5 MB in a month (wow)

rickyc091• 13 years ago

Yeah, I got hit by the 99c fee, but I emailed them about it and they gave me a refund. Their customer service is pretty good, although it does take a while for them to get back to you.

Camillo• 13 years ago

I've been using VOIP for most of my calls for over a year (using Google Voice through the iOS app Talkatone). It is flat out unusable over 3G, the latency is just too high.

xur17• 13 years ago

I hope it works out for them, but I've had a similar experience.

tirant• 13 years ago

I use VoIP through the free app 'Line' and it seems to work quite well on 3.XG lines. Voice Quality is also higher than normal calls.

wasd• 13 years ago

I had a similar experience on Android using GroovyIP and TMobile HSPA+ and WiFI.

josh2600• 13 years ago

I want freedompop to succeed, but I have trouble seeing their vision in a world without lightsquared. A lot of us in the Telecom industry had high hopes for low-orbit satellite but it wasn't meant to be.

Even though Freedompop has had to go to market without the crazy low lightsquared pricing, they found an ally in Clearwire who has nothing but excess capacity. Ergo, freedompop gets a data rate they can resell at high margin.

I want them to win but VoIP over 3G is hard. Very curious about what infrastructure they're using to do the VoIP calls and whether there's going to be a proper switch in the core.

gergles• 13 years ago

Free*

There's a $2 fee if you come close to your bandwidth cap (where they automatically 'helpfully' add value so you don't run out) and a $.99 fee if you don't use enough data (at least 5 MB a month). They'll probably have new and exciting secret fees when they roll this out.

I very much dislike the redefinition of the words 'free' and 'unlimited' among telecom providers, and we as a community should not support this. They're asking me for a credit card number to signup, ipso facto, it isn't free.

kgermino• 13 years ago

I use their free 4G service now.

Yes, there are 101 up-sells and add-ons that cost money. However, as long as you use that 5MB minimum none of them are surprises. The '$2 fee' you speak of is (as you implied) not so much a fee as 'recharging your prepaid card.' They we're upfront about it and they make it easy to disable.

Everything else is a GoDaddy style up-sell. Annoying, but very easy to ignore.

Other than the initial purchase I haven't paid them a cent.

programminggeek• 13 years ago

Little by little, prepaid and per use phone plans are becoming more popular. I'm surprised it's taken this long, but eventually people will catch on and realize they don't need to pay $100/month for a smartphone plan.

argonaut• 13 years ago

Something to note: FreedomPop's coverage (based on WiMax) is fairly spotty, even in the SF Bay Area, which can be very frustrating.

daimyoyo• 13 years ago

Just be sure to uncheck the option to tell your address book about them:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5827251

OldSchool• 13 years ago

I'm not expecting it to be free but FreedomPop's latest 3G/4G hotspot is quite a good deal if you want a mobile hotspot around but you don't really need to use it often.

For $3.99/mo you get 500MB on the Sprint 3G/4G network and an additional $3.49/mo lets you roll over up to 500MB of unused data each month the thing is just sitting there unused. Yes 4G coverage is minimal nationwide, and I'd choose Verizon over Sprint given the choice, but for probably under $100/year my kids now have all the internet access they need for car trips. Additional GB are $20 if you use up what you've accumulated.

FreedomPop Will Take On Carriers By Offering Smartphones And Freemium Phone Plan

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