Leap Wireless Taking Cricket Nationwide With Best Buy, Other Retailers
Regional low-cost wireless service provider Leap Wireless is going national.
The company, which sells prepaid phones and service under the Cricket brand, said on Wednesday night that it will soon start selling a variety of phones across the country via Best Buy and other retailers. Among the products it will sell are phones with the company’s unique Muve Music service.
Enabling the expansion is a deal that Leap has with Sprint, allowing it to sell Cricket even in cities where it doesn’t have its own services available.
“This is a significant milestone in the plans we announced last year to create a new, hybrid wholesale and facilities-based model that is unique in the wireless industry,” Leap CEO Doug Hutcheson said in a statement. “We are excited to bring Cricket’s innovative wireless products to a large group of consumers who until now have not been able to take advantage of the tremendous value these products provide.”
Best Buy will start selling devices beginning Sept. 25, with other retailers following over the next two months including select Wal-mart stores, Dollar General stores as well as HSN.
In conjunction with the expansion, Cricket is adding some new phones to its lineup, including the Score, an Android phone from China’s ZTE and, later this year, a Muve-compatible feature phone called the Chorus.
