Leap takes Cricket national, with help from Best Buy and Sprint

Service provider Leap Wireless is taking its prepaid Cricket brand national. Beginning Sept. 25, it will begin selling phones in more than 1,300 Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile stores nationwide.

"These products feature nationwide coverage and no contracts. Several of them are being offered by Cricket for the first time and are customized and unique to Best Buy," Leap CEO Doug Hutcheson said in a statement.

The deal is being made possible through a deal with Sprint, which will offer coverage in areas the smaller Leap network doesn't reach.

In time for the holidays, Best Buy will offer three handsets with Cricket's popular Muve Music service (CP: Cricket's Muve Music service succeeding by untraditional means).

The Samsung Vitality and ZTE Score smartphones will be available for $200 and $130, respectively, while the ZTE Chorus feature phone will be priced at $100. Unlimited prepaid feature phone plans are $45 month, while the Muve Music Smartphone rate is $55. Both include unlimited calling, texting and song downloads, ringtones, ringback tones, video messaging, mobile video, 3G mobile data and data backup.

Dan Hesse, CEO of Sprint, which is enjoying strong success with its own prepaid brand, Boost Mobile, noted the health of the prepaid market during a talk at a Goldman Sachs event yesterday. Hesse described pricing in the prepaid space as "stabilizing," telling the audience: "The economy is clearly making prepaid a more and more important part of the industry."

Verizon, likewise aware of the trend — and consumer cutbacks — last week also pushed out nationally the $50 unlimited prepaid plan that it had been piloting in California and Florida (CP: Verizon to offer $50 unlimited prepaid plan this week).

"In these times," said Verizon spokesperson Brenda Raney, "There are some people who would prefer living on a prepaid plan."

Cricket today additionally introduced two new feature phones, the Huawei Pillar, for $70, and the Samsung Chrono, for $40. Both will be available at Best Buy with two new Cricket PayGo service plans, for $25 or $35 a month. Each includes unlimited texting, 3G mobile Web and picture and video messaging, but the extra $10 buys you 1,000 minutes up talk time, versus 300 minutes.

Hutcheson, celebrating the Leap agreement with Best Buy, said it would help the carrier to "significantly expand" the Cricket distribution footprint nationwide, as well as follow through on plans to create a unique "hybrid, wholesale and facilities-based model."