Leap's network starting to look more national

For a company that specializes in local wireless calling plans, Leap is starting to look a lot more like an operator with a nationwide coverage. Today Leap announced a roaming footprint covering many of the major metro markets in the US, the result of its reciprocal agreements with fellow regional CDMA provider MetroPCS and 13 smaller wireless operators.

Customers with one of Leap’s higher-end calling plans will now be able to roam freely into markets ranging from Los Angeles and San Francisco to Miami, Dallas, Cleveland and Detroit. Customers that subscriber to a Cricket Communications plan under $50 a month can add those additional markets to their in-network coverage for $5 a month.

Traditionally Leap has taken a local approach to calling plans, offering unlimited calling in a customer’s home market but charging them separately for each minute used outside of their home market. As Leap began building its network into regional clusters such as the Central Valley of California and throughout Texas and Denver, its in-network calling areas expanded with them, but most major markets in the US fell well outside that coverage area. The premium extended-coverage footprint, as Leap calls it, allows Leap to extend in-network coverage to markets where it does not have networks or spectrum.

Though the roaming agreements give Leap’s customers new flexibility in travel, Leap said it is not changing its fundamental business model, one focused on customers earning less than $50,000 a year, who rarely travel outside of their home markets. Leap instead views the extended footprint as a supplemental offering, much the way it views its EV-DO broadband data card service or prepaid service.