FreedomPop is bringing free mobile service to tablets

FreedomPop, the carrier offering free and cheap data plans on Sprint’s network, today announced that it’s bringing its free voice, data, and text plans to tablet users starting with the iPad mini and Samsung Tab 3. Since LTE iPads only support data over their cellular connection, the carrier provides iPad users with Apple headsets with mics for making calls and an app that routes calls/texts through its own VoIP platform. While there are competitors like Skype that enable VoIP calling on iPads already, FreedomPop has a couple things going for it.

Tablet owners in the US have cause for cheer as they can now get free mobile access from freemium mobile network FreedomPop, which announced that it is now supporting the iPad Mini and Samsung Tab 3. The iPad Mini will sell for $319 and the Samsung Tab 3 for $199. Other than providing free data, FreedomPop is also letting users associate a unique phone number with any of its LTE tablets to make free calls and texts, something that the company says doesn’t exist for tablets offered by larger carriers, “partially because of the potential to cannibalize high margin phone plans.” Users who already have an LTE tablet can also move their existing devices to FreedomPop and get the same 500MB of LTE data, 200 voice minutes and 500 text messages free. FreedomPop acts as a mobile virtual network operator, and in the US it purchases bandwidth from Sprint. To make money, FreedomPop seeks to woo new and current customers to its paid services — it recently launched