{"id":654178,"date":"2013-04-24T09:40:20","date_gmt":"2013-04-24T13:40:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=805308"},"modified":"2013-04-24T09:40:20","modified_gmt":"2013-04-24T13:40:20","slug":"nine-months-after-talking-up-the-carrier-deal-freedompop-shows-off-its-first-sprint-friendly-hotspot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/654178","title":{"rendered":"Nine Months After Talking Up The Carrier Deal, FreedomPop Shows Off Its First Sprint-Friendly Hotspot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"100\" height=\"70\" src=\"http:\/\/tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com\/2013\/04\/fp-overdrivepro.jpg?w=100&amp;h=70&amp;crop=1\" class=\"attachment-tc-carousel-river-thumb wp-post-image\" alt=\"fp-overdrivepro\" style=\"float: left; margin: 0 10px 7px 0;\" \/><\/p>\n<p><a  href=\"http:\/\/www.freedompop.com\/\">FreedomPop <\/a>has been promising to bring mostly free 4G internet access to the masses for over a year now, but those ambitions have been hampered by partner Clearwire&#8217;s spotty WiMax coverage &#8212; there are sizable swaths of the country where you just can&#8217;t get service. That won&#8217;t be the case for much longer though, as FreedomPop has just started taking orders its <a  href=\"http:\/\/www.freedompop.com\/OverdrivePro\">first Sprint-friendly wireless hotspot<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Granted, it&#8217;s not exactly a new one. The $40 Overdrive Pro first hit Sprint shelves back in early 2011, but at least the dual-mode device allows FreedomPop users to tap into Sprint&#8217;s sizable nationwide 3G network when WiMAX isn&#8217;t available. As always, FreedomPop users are given 500MB of free wireless network access per month, but the company offers a slew of monthly rate plans and features in hopes of generating some additional revenue. It seems to be working well enough so far &#8212; FreedomPop CEO Stephen Stokols told <a  href=\"http:\/\/www.fiercewireless.com\/story\/freedompop-moves-sprints-ev-do-network-trumpets-profitable-business-model\/2013-04-24\">FierceWireless<\/a> that nearly half of the service&#8217;s existing users have made some sort of additional purchase.<\/p>\n<p>Frankly, it&#8217;s about time. FreedomPop first announced that it would migrate to Sprint&#8217;s CDMA\/LTE service <a href=\"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2012\/07\/11\/freedompop-sprint-team-up-to-broaden-reach-of-their-freemium-internet-service\/\">last July<\/a>, and since then the Niklas Zennstrom-backed company has dutifully pushed out WiMAX devices while talking up the eventual switch.<\/p>\n<p>In the event that you&#8217;ve already thrown down some cash on one of FreedomPop&#8217;s earlier doodads, you can contact customer service to coordinate a swap, though you should know that the company is also hoping to roll out some devices capable of running on Sprint&#8217;s growing LTE network in the months to come. Among those forthcoming LTE devices is a nifty clip that physically attaches to tablets, and FreedomPop previously confirmed that it plans to flesh out its existing hardware lineup with a slew of wireless data cases for Android devices like Samsung&#8217;s Galaxy S III. It&#8217;s worth noting though that the iPhone sleeve that garnered plenty of early attention in the company still hasn&#8217;t seen the light of day because the FCC has qualms about its design, so these sorts of device-specific hotspots may need some more fine-tuning before FreedomPop pushes them out the door. <\/p>\n<p>  <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/feeds.wordpress.com\/1.0\/gocomments\/tctechcrunch2011.wordpress.com\/805308\/\"><\/a> <\/p>\n<div class=\"feedflare\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/crunchgear?a=gCMSLGLpDCY:QxaE8nIaonA:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/crunchgear?i=gCMSLGLpDCY:QxaE8nIaonA:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/crunchgear?a=gCMSLGLpDCY:QxaE8nIaonA:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/crunchgear?i=gCMSLGLpDCY:QxaE8nIaonA:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/crunchgear?a=gCMSLGLpDCY:QxaE8nIaonA:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/crunchgear?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>FreedomPop has been promising to bring mostly free 4G internet access to the masses for over a year now, but those ambitions have been hampered by partner Clearwire&#8217;s spotty WiMax coverage &#8212; there are sizable swaths of the country where you just can&#8217;t get service. That won&#8217;t be the case for much longer though, as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-654178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mobile","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654178\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}