After being on the market under the auspices of AT&T over the past few months, Cricket Wireless is set to make a slight change to its unlock policy at the beginning of next month whereby the carrier will extend the waiting period required for granting an unlock request from four months of continuous paid service to six months of active, paid service on a branded device, purchased from the carrier itself or from an authorized dealer. The change is likely a response to the growing market for unlocked AT&T-powered Cricket smartphones owing to their deeper than average subsidies for popular models such as the Moto G LTE and the Lumia line.
Currently, only the MetroPCS prepaid unlock policy is shorter at three months of continuous paid service, with TracFone having the longest active service requirement at one full year of service before granting an unlock request. In contrast, this makes Cricket’s change a more than reasonable length of time for a prepaid carrier unlock policy, since it usually takes 6 months of paid service for a carrier to recover a device subsidy and shorter unlock request periods encourage mass purchases solely for resale as unlocked devices.
