Target appears to want to be the next big prepaid wireless retailer. The box store already has a deal in place with Consumer Cellular, to provide customer service to its subscribers. Now the company has signed a deal with FreedomPop to sell its devices and SIM cards in over 1,100 stores nationwide as well as through Target's website. The devices and SIM's are available immediately with prices starting at $59 for phones and $4.99 for a SIM card.
The deal should help Target to better compete against the likes of WalMart which already has exclusive partnerships with TracFone brands and Boost Mobile. According to FreedomPop Walmart owns 15% of the prepaid wireless retail market.
FreedomPop operates on both the Sprint and AT&T networks. The company offers a completely free basic plan to its Sprint network customers that features 200 minutes, 500 MB of data and 500 text messages. It also has a free offering on the AT&T network which features 200 minutes, 200 MB of data and 500 text messages. FreedomPop uses the free plan to try and upsell customers on other services that bring in revenue for the company. Such services include things like faster data speeds and voicemail.
"We’ve had enormous success in offering our free mobile services online only, and now we’re opening up our service to an entirely new market with our expansion into retail locations," said FreedomPop's Chief Operating Officer Steven Sesar in a press release. He continued, "It’s an unprecedented level of access to our free mobile service."
FreedomPop has a pretty lofty goal of trying to acquire 100 million worldwide users by the year 2020. Between the USA, UK, Spain and several other locations the company is said to have 2 million subscribers. The Target deal should help with the much needed growth as the company has yet to reach profitability and has taken a lot of funding from venture capitalists.
From what I’ve read, unless you pay for most of the FreedomPop “extra” services, you really don’t get much, and what you do get for free is poor quality calls. One thing I’ve always disliked about FreedomPop is having to signup for emails just to get any information from their web site.