Cricket revamps its lineup and it seems to be an improvement

This has been a big year for prepaid shakeups, with several brands refreshing their lineups, including Metro by T-Mobile and Google Fi. Now it seems Cricket is also set to overhaul its offerings with the introduction of four new plans starting at $30 a month.

The new lineup isn’t dramatically different from the old one, but it makes some notable tweaks to pricing and features. Here’s a quick breakdown:

• Sensible 10GB Plan: Previously, Cricket offered 5GB and 10GB plans, but this new offering replaces the former while retaining its lower $30-a-month pricing.
• Select Unlimited Plan: This is a complete rebrand of the Simply Unlimited Plan, but now starts at $35 a month, which is $5 less than before. This plan includes unlimited talk, text, and data, as well as international calling and texting to Canada and Mexico, starting at $35 a month. That’s $5 less than the old basic unlimited plan.
• Smart Unlimited Plan: This includes everything in the Select plan, as well as international texting to 200 countries. You’ll also get 100GB of cloud storage and 15GB of hotspot access, starting at $45 a month.
• Supreme Unlimited Plan: For $55 a month, you get everything from the Smart plan in addition to HBO Max with Ads, 35GB of extra hotspot data, and 50GB of extra cloud storage.

As you might have guessed, prices can drop even further for those with multiple lines. Cricket has yet to update its official pages with all of its discount breakdowns, but we do know a little about what to expect. For example, you can get two lines of Smart Unlimited Plan for $75, or what works out to $37.50 per line. This drops even further for four lines, with Smart Unlimited dropping down to $25 per line.

These new plans might not be as big of a shakeup as we’ve seen from some other players, but the lower pricing is very much welcome. I honestly half expected Cricket to advertise lower prices while quietly excluding taxes and fees for the first time — yes, I’m jaded from T-Mobile’s move. Thankfully, that’s not the case here, and Cricket’s rep made it clear that taxes and fees are still baked into the advertised pricing.

Still, what’s less clear is what network priority these plans are on and how that will compare to before. For those who aren’t aware, Cricket is owned by AT&T, and over the years, its various plans have danced around the priority ladder a bit. For example, despite no marketing to point it out, its now-retired highest-end plan had the same priority as postpaid AT&T, while the rest of the plans were on a lower tier.

It’s unclear what priority the new plans have, and unfortunately, these aren’t things that AT&T or Cricket easily divulge, so for now, all we can do is guess until a third party does some deeper network testing to find out. I can take an educated guess and say I’m fairly confident that if any of the plans still have high priority, it would be the Supreme Unlimited Plan. It’s possible the Smart plan could also see higher priority, but I’d say it’s much less likely.

Assuming no major changes to priority or other surprises, these new plans really seem like an improvement, which is always nice to see in a world where I duck and cover every time I hear a postpaid carrier is getting ready to announce new plans — because I know it will only mean bad news.