Cricket raises data allotments once again, though speed caps remain

When it comes to prepaid carriers, Cricket Wireless is easily one of the better values you’ll find with generous data polls and low pricing, all on AT&T’s reasonably solid network. In an effort to continue raising the bar to keep up with Tmo and the competition, AT&T’s Cricket is once again raising up the data offered — without changing the costs involved.

While the $30 base plan (1GB) and $50 8GB plan remain the same, starting tomorrow the $40 plan will give you 3GB instead of 2.5, and the $60 plan will jump from 10GB to 12GB.

Cricket also took the time to announce it will be offering a number of its devices for free or at a substantially discounted price for a limited time. The catch being that you’ll need to port your number from an existing network.

Free devices covered under the promotion include the Alcatel Streak, Samsung Galaxy Amp 2, and ZTE Sonata. Discounted models include the LG Stylo 2 for $79.99, Samsung Galaxy Amp Prime for $29.99, and the LG X Power for $49.99.

With these discounted offers and the new raised data, now could be a good time to switch to Cricket — but is it really worth it? The answer to that largely depends on what you’re looking for.

While Cricket is cheap and has great data plans, it also is known for capping its LTE to 8mbps and its HSPA+ at 4mbps. For those that spend most of their time on Wi-Fi, these speed are still more than good enough for watching YouTube videos and other basic uses when away from home, but are pretty slow when compared to AT&T’s average uncapped speeds of around 40mbps.

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