Hasta La Gadget!

We like the idea of NetZero’s budget-friendly mobile broadband — just not its use of Clearwire’s small, aging WiMAX network. The provider should soon take care of that problem through new MVNO agreements with Sprint and Verizon. The five-year Sprint pact gives NetZero both LTE and EV-DO; the Verizon deal serves more as a safety net, supplying EV-DO alone for three years. Both agreements only take effect in the second quarter of 2014, but they should finally give the NetZero broad coverage and higher peak speeds that it needs to compete with more expensive rivals.

Filed under: Wireless, Networking, Mobile, Verizon, Sprint

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Via: FierceBroadband Wireless

Source: United Online, Seeking Alpha

The classic trick to spurring early adoption of a data hotspot service is to share it with others, and NetZero has every intention of being as giving as its precursors. Its new Data Share program lets those who own of the company’s WiMAX devices give away up to 1GB of data every month through Facebook, spread across five friends at 200MB each. Apart from needing NetZero hardware in a coverage area, there’s no financial strings attached — neither the sender nor the recipient needs to adopt more than the free, 200MB per month they already have just for showing up. The real dilemma is managing just who gets the data in the 4G provider’s first come, first served approach to the sharing link that hits friends’ social news feeds. NetZero is no doubt hoping that the ubiquity of the giveaway (and a half-off device sale during October) will put an early end to any rivalries.

Continue reading NetZero gives subscribers free data to share through Facebook, doles out friendship 1GB at a time

Filed under: Wireless, Networking, Mobile

NetZero gives subscribers free data to share through Facebook, doles out friendship 1GB at a time originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Oct 2012 06:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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