Hasta La Gadget!

FreedomPop has spent the past year trying to turn the wireless industry on its ear with its freemium mobile Internet service, but the Niklas Zennstrom-backed company is now setting its sights on replacing people’s pricey home Internet contracts. After teasing folks with pre-orders for wireless modems late last year, FreedomPop officially opened up its home service to the masses this morning.

Here’s FreedomPop’s home service in a nutshell: users who pay $89 for the company’s Hub Burst wireless modem and sign up for a basic account are treated to 1GB of free wireless Internet access right out of the gate. That home cap seems a little on the low side considering just how much data people are consuming these days, but with median household data usage under 5.5GB FreedomPop figures there’s plenty of room to make a splash by targeting folks who just don’t lean on the web all that much.

While FreedomPop home users are treated to a higher free data cap than their wireless counterparts, most of the service’s nuts and bolts remain the same regardless of what device people are hooking up to it. FreedomPop’s goal of bringing free Internet to the unconnected (or underconnected) masses may seem altruistic at first glance, but the company is naturally in this business to make some money. The plan? That users will participate in affiliate promotions and pay extra monthly fees in exchange for higher monthly rate caps (think $9.99/month for 10GB of access) and a slew of value-added features. Subscribers can also effectively share their monthly data ration (a feature that was only just recently fired up) with friends and family as needed.

If any of this has managed to pique your interest, remember that Clearwire’s WiMAX network (which FreedomPop leans extensively on) isn’t quite as fleshed out as the 4G networks offered by other providers. That said, FreedomPop is still planning a switch to Sprint’s LTE network at some point this year, so that FreedomPop’s data offerings may soon become much more appealing.

Wireless provider FreedomPop, which offers free data to smartphone users, has announced additional funding of $4.3 million in order to bolster up its network and provide customers with more features. Case in point: the company announced that users will now be able share data with one another, whether they’re friends, family members, or just acquaintances.

FreedomPop’s new data sharing program allows you to share or trade megabytes almost like a currency of sorts, and will allow you request megabytes through Facebook or Twitter from users who are willing to hand them over. Purchasing the $99 iPhone/iPod Touch sleeve will get you 500MB per month, but if you need more, your social friends may help you out this time around.

As for the additional funding, the company says that the extra cash will help them continue to come up with new plans and social features that users will enjoy. The company outed the ability to boost the amount of free data each user gets for referring a friend to FreedomPop, a system that will not only reward users, but will also gain customers for FreedomPop.

FreedomPop CEO Stephen Stokols says that the company plans to do “very little” hardware development, and instead will focus on getting more customers and adding new features to their service. Stokols says that “hundreds of thousands” of users have signed up for FreedomPop so far, and the program is still in beta mode, so once the service launches publicly nationwide, we should see a huge surge of users make their way to FreedomPop.

FreedomPop raises $4.3 million in additional funding, lets users share data is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
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Forbes is reporting that FreedomPop, the gratis wireless broadband startup, is planning to release a 4G device designed specifically for tablets. The company’s “LTE Clip” will attach to an iPad or Android tablet and transform WiFi-only devices into 4G-capable hotspots (so long as you’re in an area with Sprint service). Weighing in at 2.5 ounces, the Clip will act as a mobile hotspot, supporting eight connected devices with up to six hours of battery life. Similar to its current model, FreedomPop will reportedly spot up to 500MB of data for free each month, with the ability to raise the cap via a paid add-on package or by using credits earned for inviting friends to join the service. We have yet to receive direct confirmation from the company, but Forbes suggests that we’ll see the LTE Clip in the latter half of 2013 — until then, it may be worth checking out the rest of the FreedomPop lineup.

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Source: Forbes

FreedomPop’s made a name for itself by selling cases that enable iPod Touch users to get at least 500MB of data each month for free, and now the company has partnered with TextPlus to give users the ability to send SMS messages as well. Along with a basic free plan, FreedomPop will offer three pricing tiers, maxing out at $15 for unlimited text and 1,000 voice minutes. The partnership will come to full fruition sometime in the first quarter, though the company doesn’t specify any additional details. We have the press release ready for your perusal below the break.

Continue reading FreedomPop pals up with TextPlus to offer free SMS

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile

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FreedomPop’s gamble on free WiMAX data launched in beta at the start of month, but early adopters had to be contented with conventional hotspots and modems at first; those of us with a fixation on data-only cellular handsets had to keep waiting. We can stay slightly cooler-headed now that the provider is shipping its iPod touch 4G Sleeve. Shelling out $99 grafts a 4G hotspot to the back of the fourth-generation media player that gives it independence from WiFi as well as connection sharing with eight other devices — at least, for anyone willing to burn through that 500MB of free monthly data in record time. About the only catches are the $10 per gigabyte overage fee and a design that’s just slightly behind the times for iPod addicts. While some of us will still cling to smartphones for coverage or legacy reasons, others who mostly communicate through Instagram food photos could have that excuse they need to drop cellular phone service once and for all.

Update: Thanks to reader (and early adopter) Penn who pointed out that overages are $20 per gigabyte if you’re on the free plan — it’s only $10 if you’re a regularly paying customer.

Continue reading FreedomPop ships its 4G-enabling iPod touch case, lets us nearly go phoneless for $99 (update: plan clarifications)

Filed under: Portable Audio/Video, Wireless, Networking, Mobile

FreedomPop ships its 4G-enabling iPod touch case, lets us nearly go phoneless for $99 (update: plan clarifications) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 29 Oct 2012 09:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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