AT&T to Relaunch Cricket By End of Second Quarter

[cdmagurus.com]

AT&T plans to relaunch Cricket Wireless, the prepaid provider it acquired earlier this year, at the end of the second quarter. AT&T CFO John Stephens said new customers will be given devices that run on AT&T's LTE network, rather than Cricket's, as the company looks to transition customers away from Cricket's spectrum so it can be reused. Stephens said Cricket will be given a national presence, with 3,000 locations around the country. At the same time, AT&T's existing prepaid service, Aio Wireless, will be folded into Cricket. AT&T expects it will take 18 months to transition all Cricket's customers away from Cricket's CDMA network to AT&T's LTE network. AT&T is pursuing a path similar to one set by T-Mobile with MetroPCS. When T-Mobile acquired MetroPCS last year, it began selling new devices that worked on its own HSPA/LTE network rather than MetroPCS's CDMA network. AT&T's ultimate goal is to repurpose Cricket's spectrum.


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