{"id":645503,"date":"2013-03-06T14:18:29","date_gmt":"2013-03-06T19:18:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/?p=617393"},"modified":"2013-03-06T14:18:29","modified_gmt":"2013-03-06T19:18:29","slug":"freedompops-home-broadband-service-goes-live-can-you-survive-on-1-gb-a-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/645503","title":{"rendered":"FreedomPop\u2019s home broadband service goes live. Can you survive on 1 GB a month?"},"content":{"rendered":"

FreedomPop launched its home broadband service<\/a> on Wednesday, taking the freemium model it uses for mobile data<\/a> to the residential broadband market. FreedomPop is offering 1 GB free of charge to any user who signs up for service and buys its $89 home WiMAX router.<\/p>\n

Anyone who does more than check email on their home PC is surely going to use more than a single gigabyte in a 30-day spell, but as with its mobile service, FreedomPop is offering ways for users to earn more free data<\/a> and selling premium data plans with bigger buckets of data. The bottom line though is heavy home broadband users aren\u2019t going to sign up with FreedomPop \u2013 these plans aren\u2019t designed for Netflix or file sharing\u00a0 — but the virtual network operator is making a compelling case to casual data users, selling home connectivity for as little as $10 a month.<\/p>\n

\"FreedomPop<\/a>FreedomPop is offering four tiers of service<\/a>, all of which tap into Clearwire\u2019s WiMAX network available in 70 cities<\/a> (as an MVNO FreedomPop resells Clearwire\u2019s WiMAX capacity today and will soon resell Sprint LTE connections as well<\/a>). The first tier costs nothing, giving customers 1 GB of monthly data with speeds throttled to under 1.5 Mbps. Every additional megabyte beyond the one-gig cap costs a cent, so going way over that cap could be a mighty expensive proposition. For instance, Streaming a 2 GB HD movie would cost you an additional $20.<\/p>\n

But FreedomPop is being perfectly up front that this plan is meant for basic web surfing and email. In any case, the low-speed connection would prevent you from engaging in many bandwidth-sucking activities. As with its mobile service, FreedomPop allows free users to earn more data in 50 MB chunks by engaging the FreedomPop social network, using FreedomPop\u2019s IP services<\/a> and participating in promotions. It\u2019s not yet clear if FreedomPop will allow customers to share their unused data<\/a> with other home users like it allows mobile users to swap megabytes.<\/p>\n

The next tier up is a $10 monthly plan, which ups the cap to 10 GB while keeping speeds limited to 1.5 Mbps. From there, the cap stays at 10 GB, but for $5 or $8 more a month you can boost speeds to 3 Mbps and 8 Mbps respectively. In the paid tiers, FreedomPop is charging a half-cent for every megabyte overage.<\/p>\n

Even still, 10 GB isn\u2019t much for a home connection. In July, my colleague Stacey Higginbotham took a detailed look at how different households consumed broadband<\/a>, and found even sparse users of streaming services still consumed well over 10 GB each month, to say nothing of 1 GB. But once you turn off that multimedia spigot, usage drops considerably. Stacey interviewed one user in Atlanta who averaged 500 MB a month for three straight months when she took a hiatus from streamed video.<\/p>\n

You might think of these of your grandparents\u2019 home broadband plans (though in this day and ages, grandparents are becoming increasingly sophisticated in web communications tools), but FreedomPop seems to be positioning as a means of bridging digital divide, offering cheap, and even the possibility of free, service to people who normally couldn\u2019t afford home broadband or just want minimal connectivity. There are still millions of dial-up users left in the U.S. It would be interesting to see if FreedomPop can reach them with this service.<\/p>\n

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