We have some good news and we have some bad news. The good news is that FreedomPop, provider of 100% free wireless voice, text and data service now supports Apple’s iPhone 5. The bad news is that the carrier’s free plan is for very, very light users who consume less than 500MB each month, speak in the phone fewer than 200 minutes per month and send and receive less than 500 combined messages.
If you don’t fall into that category, however, you still have some surprisingly affordable options to choose from.
FreedomPop, which is an MVNO that makes use of Sprint’s 3G and 4G LTE networks, also offers a more reasonable plan for subscribers who intend to actually use their phones: Unlimited talk and text for $11 per month, or as little as $4.58 per month if you pay for two years of service up front.
In other words, you can make a one-time payment of $110 and get unlimited talk and text for two years.
Unfortunately FreedomPop will never be economical for subscribers who use a lot of data each month and aren’t constantly covered by WiFi. Data over 500MB is billed at $0.025 per MB — or more than $25 per GB. For light users and people who are often covered by WiFi, however, it simply doesn’t get any better.
FreedomPop is selling refurbished iPhone 5 handsets on its site for $350, or users can bring their own Sprint-compatible iPhone 4, iPhone 4S or iPhone 5.
