After announcing its plans to enter home broadband service back in December, MVNO FreedomPop has today made its Burst wireless router available to the public.
The device retails for $89 and gives users access to FreedomPop’s freemium service on Clearwire’s WiMax network. Customers are given 1GB free per month and allowed the opportunity to earn more free data by adding friends via email or social networks and by engaging in promotions.
Customers can expect speeds around 1.5 mbps with the freemium model and a reasonable overage charge of $0.05 per additional megabyte used. But any FreedomPop customer anticipating heavy data use can opt for one of the company’s paid plans that start at $10 for 10GB at the standard freemium rate of speed. Dropping $15 on a paid plan will boost the speed to 6 mbps, however, and paying $19 will take it up to 12 mbps.
“We figured out the economics of the business,” COO Steven Sesar told Wireless Week. “We believe we can apply the same model and disrupt at-home.”
FreedomPop has announced plans to move from Clearwire’s WiMax network to Sprint’s LTE network next year, a switch that will expand availability for its wireless service as well as the new broadband service.
