CricKet's Data Plan, AWS Phones & Activation Fee

Two quick things...

1) Did you know that CricKet charges a $15 activation fee to start service on one of their cell phones? I'm not sur if\when it gets waived, but you don't see MetroPCS or Pocket Communications doing that. Then again, CricKet's phone prices are a little lower than the other two carriers' prices, at least online, offsetting the fee.

2) CricKet is now selling its tri-band (AWS capable) phones in other markets than Oklahoma City. They must've sold out of UTStarCom 7126's, as the phones available are the Samsung Spex and the Samsung MyShot. They're quite inexpensive ($70 for the Spex, $130 for the MyShot) all things considered, though the best thing they have is Bluetooth (and a 1.3 megapixel camera on the MyShot) so they're not giving pure gold away...still, it's nice to have "network-wide" phones available...um...network-wide...

3) CricKet seems to be phasing out the Kyocera Passport modem they were using for wireless data in favor of the UTStarCom U100 USB modem, which is tri-band (read: compatible with Oklahoma City) and can be used on any computer, not just older laptops. It's also $99 instead of $59, but that's still not a bad price for a EvDO Rev. A USB modem. Data speeds seem to e in the 1-1.2 megabit range for download speed and the 250-400 kilobit range for uploads. The service is definitely Rev. A (marked by the decent upload speed) however it could be quite a bit better, particularly on downloads. Also, keep in mind that your $35 or $40 per month buys you 5GB of data at full speed, after which you're gonna be throttled. Don't know how bad the throttling will be but just putting that out there. So basically your high speed data access works out to about $8 per gigabyte (plus taxes so probably more like $9) or $7 (or $8 with taxes and fees) if you already have CricKet voice service. Not bad for web browsing, e-mail and such, but don't do anything more than download music (bought, not P2P...P2P uses more bandwidth) and maybe watch the occasional web video, lest you go over your allotment, which works out to a little over 166 MB per day.