Freedompop founded in 2011 is based in Los Angeles, CA and backed by Skype’s co-founder Niklas Zennstrom. CEO of Freedompop, Stephen Stokolis was recently on This Week in Startups with Jason Calacanis. The company is on a mission to disrupt the telecom industry as we know it today.
Partnered with TextPlus to allow for free text messages and phone calls. The company uses Clearwire’s Wimax service that provides 4G speed to the 80 largest markets in the world. The mission is to deliver a free mobile platform of wireless voice and data service to its users. Offering an initial freemium model of 500 MB each month with the option to buy more data if needed -- starting at $10 per month. The pain most people are experiencing today are the over inflated costs from cell phone carriers and data plans.
Some of us may not realize this is a pain yet but when you look at what Freedompop is doing to drive the costs down with the mission to ultimately create free data sharing. The customer or user is more times than not convinced to be up sold into a data plan they do not need from their current provider. For example, very similar to the movies (I am a huge fan of the movies for the record), when you want to purchase a medium popcorn because that’s all you and your date will consume -- you are offered the large popcorn for .50 more. We do not need the large popcorn, we won’t even finish the medium popcorn. But if it’s only .50 more, why wouldn’t you upgrade to the large, and you do because it’s a better deal.
The CTIA Wireless Association states the average monthly cell phone bill is $47 per month. Why is it that when you ask the average cell phone user 46% say their monthly bill is $100 or more?
Right now our cell phone plan is “grandfathered” and up for renewal. We’re spending $173 per month for two phones, the data alone costing $55 per month. After running the numbers from the last six months of our bill we average around 1GB to 2GB for both phones. Never have my wife or myself gone over 2GB but she has been well under 1GB several times. If I were to purchase the 1GB for the both of us from Freedompop, we could save around $420 per year.
By eliminating the fat from one plan and moving to Freedompop, we would potentially have an excess in cash to pay for five months of dental insurance. If we were to change our cell phone plan today with our current carrier we would need to slide into the 4GB for $70 per month, doubling our actual usage need......Large popcorn it is, but can you layer the butter flavoring, please?
Go to freedompop to see if coverage is available in your area.
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