AT&T has launched a new range of low-cost pre-paid 4G plans under the Cricket Wireless brand name which it inherited when it acquired Leap Wireless International earlier this year. The new no-contract flat-rate voice, text and data bundles start from USD40 a month, with an additional USD5 discount available for subscribers using auto pay. The new offerings have been introduced across AT&T’s Long Term Evolution (LTE) 4G network which now covers more than 280 million people across the country. Jennifer Van Buskirk, president of Cricket Wireless, commented: ‘We kept the Cricket brand name, but one thing is certain, we are stepping up our game. We are giving no-contract consumers the value they have been waiting for.’
The Cricket Wireless branding is replacing AT&T’s own pre-paid service, Aio Wireless. AT&T completed its USD1.19 billion acquisition of Leap Wireless on 13 March 2014, adding almost five million subscribers to its user base to take its customer total to around 100 million.