After months of preparation and regulatory approvals, AT&T has taken the wraps off of The New Cricket Wireless, which replaces the previous Aio Wireless brand. To celebrate the launch, The New Cricket Wireless is offering new customers an enticing offer to switch, by offering a $50 mail-in rebate on most smartphones in its current lineup, making one phone free on the ZTE Prelude, while the same rebate makes the Moto G $99 99.
As for service plans, the new Cricket has retained Aio’s previously refreshed slate and kept the auto-pay discounts, while adding $50 device credits on the Smart and Pro service plans for use towards a new phone purchases after 12 months of consecutive airtime purchases as well as adding unlimited international text messaging to 35 countries to the same plans. The least expensive $25 talk/text only plan is also being carried over and is now a permanent offering with a dedicated slate of basic/featurephones. Finally, the Group Save discount program has also been carried over with no changes.
Those that are still under Cricket’s older CDMA network will still be able to use their phones and service for the time being, although AT&T does have plans to shut down the network within the next 18-24 months to repurpose the spectrum for HSPA and LTE service, and it is also actively looking into options for Cricket’s Muve Music subscription service, as it already has its own mobile music streaming service in Beats Music, making Muve Music redundant in its current form.
