Starting Friday, Cricket Wireless customers will be able to binge online just a little bit more.
The low-cost carrier is expanding its data cap, jumping from 2.5GB to 3GB for customers paying $40 a month, 5GB to 8GB for $50 a month, and 10GB to 12GB for $60 a month.
The prepaid wireless service, which is owned by AT&T, has access to its parent company’s network and many of its devices. Despite the expanded data caps, Cricket Wireless’s download speed is still capped at 8 megabits per second on LTE devices, and an even slower pace at 4 mbps on 4G devices. That’s snail-like compared to AT&T’s average 7-27mbps download speed.
If you don’t mind slow download speeds, like taking 35 minutes to buffer an hour-long show on Netflix, Cricket Wireless’s expanded data caps has some cost-effective advantages.
The carrier competes with low-cost, prepaid phone companies like T-Mobile’s MetroPCS and Sprint’s Boost Mobile.
MetroPCS already has similar data caps, and offers unlimited LTE data for $60 a month. It also faces congested download speed issues during times of high network usage.