Republic Wireless has cut the price of its sole device offering designed to run across its flat-rate, unlimited plan, ratcheting up the competitive pressure in the no-contract wireless space.
Customers can pay $199 for the Motorola Defy XT smartphone, which is $50 less than when the device and service was launched last year, and the legacy $19 per month for unlimited calling, messaging and data service. Or, customers can pay $79 upfront for the device and $29 per month for the same service. That lower priced model previously cost customers $99 upfront for the device.
The Republic service continues to run over Sprint Nextel’s CDMA-based network, though the company has strongly integrated Wi-Fi capabilities into the device in order to offload as much traffic as possible onto Wi-Fi networks.
The Republic Wireless moves follows that of FreedomPop last week, which rolled out a “completely free” mobile services, including voice, messaging and data services. The offer provides for unlimited calling between FreedomPop customers, 200 anytime calling minutes, unlimited text messaging and up to 500 megabytes of “4G” data services. To provide the offer, FreedomPop relies on a voice over Internet Protocol platform that will be accessible later this summer across a handful of “popular” smartphones running Google’s Android operating system. FreedomPop noted that the offering will be the first-ever all-data devices running “100% VoIP over cellular networks,” with Sprint Nextel providing the cellular network.
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