Cricket Jumps To Target

By Joseph Palenchar -- TWICE, 10/2/2009

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San Diego - Target has joined the list of new national retailers selling Cricket-branded prepaid cellular service from Leap Wireless.

Cricket PayGo products and service will chirp in almost 650 Target stores nationwide beginning Oct. 4.

Leap recently announced the addition of Best Buy Mobile to its short list of national retailers selling PayGo prepaid service. Best Buy Mobile began selling PayGo in 434 locations on Sept. 27. Earlier this year, Leap tapped its first two national retailers, Wal-Mart and Dollar General, which also offer the carrier's PayGo plans.

Previously, the carrier distributed only through company-owned stores, Cricket-branded stores owned by third parties, and indirect retailers, mainly independent wireless specialists.

PayGo plans, which let consumers prepay for unlimited wireless services at $1, $2 or $3 per day. The two retailers will also exclusively offer two new monthly unlimited-use PayGo plans priced at $40 and $45 per month.

Target will sell the Cricket TXTM8 messaging phone with vertical sliding QWERTY keyboard at $89.99 and the Cricket CAPTR VGA camera phone for $49.99.

At Best Buy Mobile, three Cricket phones are available. They are the $149. Samsung Messenger II with a slider QWERTY keyboard, the $89.99 Samsung MyShot II, and the $49.99 Cricket Captr flip phone.

Leap's CDMA 1x EV-DO network operates in 34 states.