Danny Bullard

Sprint 4G Rollout Updates

Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - 11:39 AM MDT

FreedomPop is a company that aims to provide free broadband, founded by Niklas Zennstrom (Skype Founder). FreedomPop plans on releasing a case for the iPhone 4/4S with an integrated 4G WiMax radio according to a "high level source inside FreedomPop." Not only will it allow your iPhone device to use a 4G signal, but this case will be able to share a WiMax connection with up to eight devices, for 30 hours. At the moment, FreedomPop hasn't committed to a release date.

Each iPhone case user will have a 1 GB of free data starting off. If you go over the 1 gig cap, it'll cost you $10 per gigabyte or 10 cents per MB. According to TechCrunch's sources, you'll have to put down a $100 deposit for this case. The deposit is refundable if the case is in "good" condition.

This case will allow your 3G iPhone 4/4S run on Clearwire's 4G WiMax network. Pretty neat huh? All you have to do is slide your iPhone into the case and BAM you have 4G if you're in a Clear 4G market. We know this case will not beat Verizon's 4G LTE speeds or AT&T's LTE speeds, but it will be a good alternative to 3G (especially on Sprint and Verizon) and users who don't have 4G devices (iPhone users). The Clear 4G footprint covers 130 million POPs. FreedomPop struck their wholesale agreement with Clearwire in February.

This concept isn't entirely new. We saw something very similar to this debut on Sprint in November of 2010. It was a ZTE manufactured peel that gave users access to Sprint's 3G EVDO network. ZTE's peel got decent reviews from buyers. A lot of people liked that the peel brought decent data speeds without a contract. It was a wonderful idea, hopefully FreedomPop can improve on what ZTE started on Sprint's network.

So, is this innovation at it's finest? I'd say not really, but if FreedomPop markets this case enough, it could be a huge hit.

Source: TechCrunch.com, FierceWireless