For the latest info, check out the 2011 Cricket Broadband Review
With a pretty chic website/interface, Cricket is like the attractive person you meet that also has good manners.
They make a great first impression.
Cricket Wireless Plans & Prices
Cricket Wireless offers 3 mobile broadband plans starting at $40/month. Cricket is even cheaper than broadband carriers like Sprint, Verizon or AT&T
Depending on the plan, there are different data caps. As a general rule, the more expensive the plan is the higher the data cap you’ll have.
To their benefit, Cricket’s data caps are higher in some cases than regular postpaid providers.
Cricket Broadband Speed
Cricket’s mobile broadband is a mixture of EVDO Rev. A and EVDO Rev. 0 speeds. That means it’ll be faster in some areas and not as fast in some.Cricket operates on a CDMA network. It’s the same technology that Verizon, Sprint and Alltel use.
To be exact, the mobile broadband technology is EVDO Revision A / EVDO Revision 0 which offers average speeds of 600-1400 Kbps downloading and 500-800 Kbps uploading.
The absolute maximum download is 3.1 Mbps while the max upload is 1.8 Mbps. While this is pretty comparable to a DSL connection only portable, real world speeds have been known to differ from advertised speeds. Read on for the finer details of Cricket Broadband Speed.
Cricket 3G Coverage
Cricket’s 3G coverage is limited. While it may not work out for road warriors, if you don’t travel outside the coverage area, it could replace your regular contract mobile broadband.
Welcome to their Achilles heel. If you take a look at their map, you’ll see the circles of where it’s available.
If you’re off in the rural area, then tough luck. As a matter of fact, you don’t even have to be in a rural area. Heck, you could be in Miami and not have service.
Read on to use a tool that’ll let you know if you can get Cricket 3G coverage.
Cricket Broadband Cards
At the time of this review, Cricket offered 3 broadband cards:
1. A600 (USB Broadband Card)
2. UM185C (USB Broadband Card)
3. EC1705 (USB Broadband Card)
These are three cards that I haven’t reviewed before. Click on through for some interesting tidbits on Cricket Broadband Cards.
Looking for a Comparison?
Check out the Prepaid Mobile Broadband Comparison to see how Cricket matches up against the other prepaid mobile broadband carriers out there.
Need more info? Check out the rest of the mobile broadband reviews.
Cricket is by far the worst possible carrier you can get. It is extremely slow to download even the simplest of things like a picture, I tried to download iTunes into my new laptop with it and it was terribly slow. It took four hours for it to download, mp3s take about 40 minutes to download too. DO NOT GET THIS, unless you live about 10 feet from a Cricket store.
I know how you feel Jesus. I had a Sprint broadband card that worked just fine until I moved to some strange part of my city where download speeds dropped to dial up. I wanted to burn the whole place down. The coverage map said I was in a mobile broadband area too. As it turns out, I had to find the right ‘spot’ in my house and then it started working again. Even now, I keep my Sprint Overdrive by the window to avoid interference and it works fine.
Sadly, that won’t be a fix for everyone. That’s why I recommend checking coverage before you buy, taking it for a 7 day test run (http://www.mobile-broadband-reviews.com/try-it.html) and then if you can’t get good speeds, definitely take it back so you’re not stuck with it.
Speed has not been an issue. I get what I paid for, but multiple connection failures EVERY day. (Two days w/out lost connection in 6 weeks.) Support center’s solution has been to uninstall and reinstall dozens of times. Level 2 technician has phoned me three times and stated that he’s talking to the engineers. Haven’t heard from him in weeks. No responses to phone messages or emails. Corporate store does not do technical support although I’ve been referred there a number of times. They can do nothing to tell me if my device is defective. All they the store has done is offered to let me turn it in as an insurance claim and sell me another. STAY AWAY from Cricket Broadband.
This is by far the WORST service provider in the history of EVERS! They suckkkk! They promise you up & down how great they are and they are horrible! I only had their services for about 4 days and those 4 days I was on the phone with a million different people trynna tell me how I was doing things wrong. When really they just suck and their connection is terrible! Even while I was canceling the services it took them to transfer me to a million different people before they finally cancelled. And the worst part about it is that they apparently don’t do any refunds so the $125.00 they charged me for the device and installing is theirs now. Fucking jackasses! If i was you id rather pay anybody else for internet or better yet not even get internet because when your with cricket its like you have no connection anyways!
While the hardware seems to function as well as can expected the only non profane way to describe the Cricket service provider is “worthless”. If the decision makers at their company can do no better than this FIRE THEM.
If I was not a customer of Cricket, I probably would not believe all the bad reviews. Today is my last day dealing with Cricket. There are just too many better choices out there.
Broadband is worthless–and they rip you off by not providing refunds or prorations for pre-paid crappy internet. Your cell phone internet is faster than their “broadband.” AVOID
Don’t waste you’re money in their broadband….its garbage. Takes FOREVER to load one webpage!…can’t even stream movies!