In January 2012 a similarly disruptive effort came from small French company, promising an all-but-free cell phone network which included unlimited mobile data. And to sweeten the deal, there are no contracts. Stokols thinks this will enable over half the population to save over 80% on their broadband fees.
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The service starts with a free tier, and includes monthly plans of up to 10GB with prices starting at $9.99. His company is choosing a different path, and is leveraging 4G networks from Sprint an Clearwire to create its new metered Net system, which covers about 120 million U.S.
Any American who wants high speed internet has to pay around $50/month for unlimited downloads.” That’s okay for high traffic consumer, but Stokols pointed out that almost 70% of Americans consume under 10GB per month. is an “oligopoly with essentially 2 option in any one market – Cable vs DSL. As such, margins are 65% higher in the U.S. “I also have been shocked by how the US carriers do not have that same pressure. “I know first hand how Ofcom in UK has increased competition in the UK and how that results in lower prices,” Stokols said. model for broadband, which compares badly to other countries. "We’re going to be ready as far as technical onboarding in Q1," Stokols says.īut the lack of available LTE devices for its services could push that into the second quarter, he says.FreedomPop’s CEO Stephen Stokols explained in an email to Fast Company that the new service was born, in part, from frustrations with the U.S. (NYSE: S)'s Long Term Evolution (LTE) network in 2013. The home broadband service is expected to be up and running by the end of January.įreedomPop, meanwhile, is making progress toward using Sprint Corp. metro areas, except Phoenix and San Diego - "about 80 million Americans," Stokols says.
Using the Clearwire LLC (Nasdaq: CLWR) WiMax network, the service will cover the top 80 U.S. Stokols isn't saying exactly how much the extra gigabytes will cost customers yet but makes it clear he wants to get pricing as low as possible: "$9.99 or under."įreedomPop also sweetens the deal by allowing customers the opportunity to earn more through promotions and by recruiting friends to the service. The median household in the U.S., Stokols points out, uses just over 5MB for data at home a month. With its home service, the company isn't going after the data "whales" - as Stokols describes himself - but is instead targeting the minnows. It's another gadfly move from the company that developed a "free" wireless plan for the iPod Touch. "We're going to go aggressively and earnestly after the home market," the ex- BT Group plc (NYSE: BT London: BTA) man tells Light Reading Mobile. The company will sell users an US$89 WiMax and Wi-Fi home router with a free gigabyte of data available per month and each further gigabyte priced at less than $10, according to CEO Stephen Stokols. The CEO of FreedomPop is eyeing Americans who don't use huge amounts of data as the target for a new wireless home broadband service.įreedomPop is starting pre-orders for its new home broadband modem and Internet service Wednesday.
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