Cricket surging in NYC suburbs

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posted by Joe on June 11th, 2007 - 2:31 pm | Cricket

How do you make a splash in the wireless market? How about opening 20 stores and 30 dealers in one week — in one area? Yeah, that’ll send out quite a message, and likely get you a ton of business.

Cricket did just that last week in Rochester, NY, a market it feels is untapped. If true, they came in with a great offer: $45 per month for unlimited minutes, unlimited long distance, and unlimited text messaging. Whoa! That’s the best offer for a prepaid service we’ve ever heard.

Which means there must be a catch.

Channel 13 in Rochester ran a report on the service last week, and found that there were some catches. We’ll list and respond here, because we think some of the “catches” aren’t really catches at all.

“When a user signs up, they have to buy the phone and pay for the first monthâ€™s service. Critics say Cricket does not offer a variety of phones.”

Very few prepaid plans offer subsidies for phones, even for new customers. You might be able to find one from one of the Big Four, but those are mostly refurbished models. It was also later corrected in the article that the first month of service is included in the price of the phone.

“Also, Cricketâ€™s coverage area is more limited than other carriers. If a Cricket customer uses the phone in some neighboring counties, that person might need to use the allotted roaming minutes or pay roaming charges. “

Once again, this is pretty common with prepaid services. They buy bandwidth from the major providers, so their coverage area has to be limited.

Cricket looks to be offering some killer deals. Check out our review to see if you’re covered. If you are, it’s certainly one of the better prepaid deals (if you don’t travel much).

[13 WHAM]