NetZero And Sprint Team Up To Offer Mobile Broadband

Remember NetZero? Launched in 1998, the company was the first Internet service provider to offer free access to the web and in exchange, its users were forced to put up with a permanent ad toolbar. While the company still provides dial-up Internet access, it is also understandably looking for new areas to branch out into. One of these is a new mobile broadband hotspot powered by Sprint’s 3G network.

According to NetZero, the new mobile broadband hotspot is available to 276 million people through Sprint’s 3G network, and 4G LTE will become available in Q3 2014.

“Expanding the availability of our mobile broadband service over the Sprint network gives us a much more robust presence nationally, allowing us to offer coverage to millions of additional customers,” said Rusty Taragan, President of NetZero Wireless. “There have always been a lot of great reasons to use NetZero Mobile Broadband and this expanded coverage adds another to the list. We launched our NetZero Mobile Broadband service in 2012 with a variety of value-priced monthly plans that did not require contracts or commitments and gave our customers the ability to change their plan at any time. And now, along with all those great features, we are able to serve customers in additional areas of the country that are covered by Sprint’s 3G network. This new coverage expands our NetZero Mobile Broadband coverage to more than 276 million people.”

NetZero is offering several different plans for various usage levels. True to form, the company has a free 200MB per month variant, but that likely won’t justify the purchase of the hotspot for most folks, which costs about $100. The other plans range in price from $20 to $50 per month with a top data cap of 4GB — not that much if you plan on doing a lot of video streaming and torrenting.