FreedomPop gets additional funding, offers customers data sharing

You might remember FreedomPop, the MVNO put together by Niklas Zennstrom, one of the founders of Skype. The service offers you .5GB of data free each month, and allows you to add data.  For $10 you can buy an additional 1GB, or for $35 you can purchase 5GB. But FreedomPop will now allow you to trade MB with other customers though the operator's social networking tools. Need a few MB to get you through the month? Have extra MB you don't use? It's a brilliant idea that FreedomPop COO Steven Sesar calls "a family plan on crack." Wouldn't this be a great idea for the big guys?,

FreedomPop currently allows members to earn extra bandwidth beyond the 500MB they get free each month. Making friends with another customer is now good for another 50MB; promoting the service and bringing in new customers also adds to your total. Customers connect to the network using the Bolt, which connects into a  USB port for a laptop, the Photon which is a 4G hotspot that fits in your pocket, or with the Sleeve which fits over a fourth gen Apple iPod touch to turn it into a phone with 4G capabilities. And while users need to provide their own voice and text service, that should change next month when FreedomPop is expected to enter into a deal with TextPlus. And once U.S. regulators sign off on it, a sleeve for the Apple iPhone 4 and Apple iPhone 4S will be available to give owners of those models the cheap data that the MVNO is becoming known for.

FreedomPop, which is in beta, also announced that it had received additional funding in an "A" round. Current investors only added $4.3 million to the kitty and a larger "B" round of funding should take place later in the year as the company plans on going national. We suggest that Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile keep an eye on what FreedomPop is doing because eventually they could shudder at the mention of the name. Sprint already knows a thing or two about them and in fact, the nation's third largest carrier is soon to be the primary provider of FreedomPop.

If the idea of free data appeals to you, and you like the idea of earning data and trading it, you can check out FreedomPop at the sourcelink.

source: FreedomPop via Slashgear