Cricket Wireless Store

Cricket Wireless Updates Plans

Yesterday, Cricket Wireless updated two of its phone plans.

The Core Unlimited plan (Cricket’s most basic unlimited plan) used to throttle data speeds to maximum of of 3Mbps. Cricket has bumped that up to 8Mbps. The plan’s price is unchanged.

Cricket also updated its plan that cost $40 for a single line. The plan used to include 5GB of data per month. Cricket has doubled that allotment to 10GB per month.

I expect that customers already on these plans will be automatically updated to the new plan structures, but I haven’t confirmed that with Cricket.

My take

I’m a fan of the recent changes. In the past, Cricket didn’t price its non-unlimited plans all that competitively. Doubling the data allotment on the $40 plan is a good step in the right direction.

In a review of Cricket that I published about a month ago, I wrote the following:

For most users, Cricket’s throttling won’t cause much trouble. Subscribers should still have an easy time browsing the web, streaming music, and streaming standard-definition video. Downloading apps and other large files may be a bit frustrating with Cricket’s throttled plans.

With the shift from a 3Mbps throttle to an 8Mbps throttle on the Unlimited Core plan, I feel more confident about my perspective on Cricket’s throttling.

5G Coming To Cricket Wireless

Today, AT&T came out with a press release stating that 5G service will be coming to Cricket Wireless. Here’s the relevant bit:

On Aug. 21, Cricket Wireless customers will be able to activate 5G service on the Samsung Galaxy S20+ 5G. More details soon!

As far as I can tell, Cricket has not yet updated its own web pages about 5G.

I expect Cricket subscribers will be able to access both AT&T’s sub-6 5G and AT&T’s ultra-fast millimeter wave 5G. While the S20+ will initially be the only 5G phone offered by Cricket, we should soon see the carrier offering more 5G-compatible devices. It may also be possible for Cricket customers to bring their own unlocked 5G phones to the service.