Or the users that don’t use much data will see speed increases towards the end of the billing cycles.

Some of the earlier tests in a few cities this year should an average of .1/.2 Mbps for download and upload.  You are already skirting close to dialup speeds and I could only imagine the throttled speeds; hello 9600 or 2400 baud modem.

In San Antonio, Cricket has a severe issue with text message performance.

“Cricket, by far, recorded the slowest overall and within network text receive times.”

They were over 120 seconds to receive a text message.

Cricket didn’t fare much better in data performance:

“Cricket recorded an exceptionally slow 0.1 Mbps average upload speed.”

“Cricket recorded download speeds below 1.5 Mbps in 99.1% of our tests.”

“With a significantly high 19.4% data failure rate, Cricket was the least reliable carrier in San Antonio.”

"Looking at the average speed and already being in last place consistently, I would hate to see what they throttle the speeds back to when you go over the cap."

On the Bright Side, customers may not notice the throttle-down too much.

That is assuming that price was the reason for customers leaving.  Here are some notables about Cricket:

Pittsburgh:

“Cricket recorded the greatest percentage of download and upload speeds below 1.5 Mbps, doing so in 93.4% and 100.0% of our tests, respectively.”

The average download and upload speed on Cricket was .7/.7 Mbps.

Philadelphia:

“Cricket shared last place with MetroPCS in average download speed.”

“Cricket and MetroPCS recorded download speeds below 1.5 Mbps in 85.8% and 85.3% of our tests, respectively.

Additionally, Cricket and MetroPCS recorded upload speeds below 1.5 Mbps in 100.0% and 99.7% of our tests, respectively.”

The average download and upload speed on Cricket was .9/.6 Mbps.

Denver:

“Cricket recorded the greatest percentage of download and upload speeds below 1.5 Mbps, doing so in 99.5% and 100.0% of our tests, respectively.”

The average download and upload speed on Cricket was .2/.6 Mbps.

St. Louis:

“Cricket recorded the greatest percentage of download and upload speeds below 1.5 Mbps, doing so in 95.2% and 100.0% of our tests, respectively.”

The average download and upload speed on Cricket was .7/.6 Mbps.

“Cricket delivered texts in more than one minute 17.2% of the time.”

Cincinnati:

“Cricket’s speeds were significantly slower than those of the national carriers and they finished in last place in all of our data speed tests.”

“Cricket, on the other hand, recorded 91.9% of their download tests below the much slower mark of 1.5 Mbps.”

The average download and upload speed on Cricket was .8/.6 Mbps.

All but Cincinnati were test results from August and Cincinnati was from June.

Looking at the average speed and already being in last place consistently, I would hate to see what they throttle the speeds back to when you go over the cap.

Sounds like a plan hatched by the pointy-haired boss in Dilbert.

Plus, the $50 plan (now $5 cheaper) includes less "full-speed data." I'm still convinced it will help - or necessarily simplify things - especially since Muve doesn't count against the cap, but we'll see.

I was going to ask the same thing, but I think Cricket's logic is that its music users are higher APRU users, in general. It has said in the past that they tend to do more with their smartphones and consume more data. Maybe they're banking on a lot of overages too? Q2 was so bad for Cricket though, that I don't think it had a choice but to lower prices to stop losing subs.

So how do lowered prices for data service and turning a $10 a month service into a freebie result in higher ARPU?