AP: NetZero to launch free wireless broadband
 

http://bostonglobe.com/business/2012...SLI/story.html

You have to pay for the usb stick ($50) or the hotspot ($100) but after that you get 200 mb free per month. Use it up, you are cut off to the next month.

Looks to be 4G coverage only, and their coverage map makes it look like very very limited coverage.

You can do it for a year, or you can buy up to a paid plan.

Could be a good deal for somebody who needs occasional wireless in the US if they are not heavy data users.

Pricing for the paid plans (from their website www.netzero.com)

$10 a month for 500 mb
$20 for 1 GB
$35 for 2 gb
$50 for 4 GB

Saw this the other day, I'm guessing it's going to be ad based like their free dial-up in the 90s? Excited to hear how well it works.

thanks for the link they have coverage in my city i might give this service a try

No ads.

At least according to the story in the Globe.

United Online isn’t offsetting its costs by making users look at advertising, as it did with its original offer of free dial-up Internet access. The “free’’ users will be money-losers for the company, said Mark Goldston, United Online chairman and chief executive. That means United Online is using the free plan as a way to lure customers with the hope of upselling them to paying plans, which start at $9.95 per month.


I think they want to get you hooked, run up your data, and at 199 MB you will want to cough up the $10 to get to 500 MB. The catch, of course, is

If they switch to a paid plan, they won’t be able switch back to the free one.

It's the drug dealer mentality, get them hooked for free, and once the habit gets the best of them and they can't live with the free stuff anymore, sell them the upgrade. Cut off their free stuff and they are hooked.

Whose network are they re-selling?

Sprint Nextel according to this article.

I wondering if it will allow bring in own equipment...

They're reselling Clearwire's network, which is Sprint's Wimax network. Sprint is rolling out LTE, however, so the Wimax network will probably not be expanded much beyond its current footprint.

More info: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/...est-on-319.ars

One big issue is it's Clearwave ONLY, e.g. it won't fall back to 3g on Sprint.

Wirelessly posted (Apple iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9B176 Safari/7534.48.3)

And the service will be free for the subscriber's first year only. After that, monthly charges will apply for those who wish to retain the service.

I thought briefly about it for my parents who travel occasionally for business and do not have smartphones, but the one-year limit ended it for me.

Because you'd rather pay anything for a two-year contract, or have no service at all, than get free service for a year?

At the $50 level it makes no sense to go with NetZero - you might as well go with ClearWire and get unlimited 4G for about $57 a month all in. And a Clear USB modem will fall back to 3G as needed.

Yeah, though the ClearWire option requires a 2 year contract, right?

Clear offers no contract plans, so there is no two year commitment. They also offer a $35 a month but at a lower speed for or $50 for a higher speed connection (when available). Both unlimited data.

Though I don't believe they sell any dual mode (3G/4G) devices anymore, everything they do is only 4G now. They announced that change at the end of October. Supposedly the move was to make it less of a competitor to Sprint, it's largest wholesaler.

For very occasional use, I still find the Verizon option (using with my embedded Gobi chip) the best - especially when I can buy refills off of Craigslist at 50% from people who thought they were buying Virgin refills :D

I also believe that Cricket offers a no-contract plan, if their coverage area works for you. Plenty of used Cricket modems on CL too.

Ting is another possibility as is TMobile day passes for their HSPA+ network (using an Android phone rather than a hotspot).

Does anyone know of an ok deal for Canada?