AT&T Mobility is jumping into the carrier price wars through its Cricket prepaid brand. It is targeting T-Mobile US, offering $100 to anyone who switches from T-Mobile US or its MetroPCS service. There is no limit to the number of lines one customer can switch to Cricket, and each one will earn a $100 bill credit.
Cricket’s basic plans start at $35 per month if customers choose auto pay, so a $100 bill credit is significant. Cricket can also boast more LTE coverage than T-Mobile US or MetroPCS, leveraging AT&T Mobility’s LTE network which covers 290 million potential customers. T-Mobile US is at 230 million LTE pops covered.
T-Mobile and Sprint are both offering deep discounts on mobile data through promotions launched this week, prompted by Sprint’s change in leadership. AT&T Mobility has a good reason to fire back directly at T-Mobile US first. T-Mobile US and AT&T Mobility are both GSM carriers, so in a way T-Mobile US is a bigger threat to AT&T Mobility than to the other carriers. AT&T Mobility customers can often move to T-Mobile US without buying a new phone.
Cricket Wireless, which was owned by Leap Wireless before AT&T Mobility acquired that company, was a CDMA carrier. AT&T Mobility is in the process of converting Cricket to its network.
Today’s move by AT&T/Cricket leaves Verizon Wireless as the only major U.S. carrier that has not yet made a move. Verizon Wireless faces the same issue with Sprint that AT&T Mobility faces with T-Mobile US: customers can bring a Verizon Wireless phone onto Sprint’s network to take advantage of the carrier’s latest offer. But Verizon also has the nation’s biggest subscriber base and fastest LTE network, so it may sit tight for now and let the others bleed.
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