FreedomPop Freedom Spot Photon

By Alex Colon

The Freedom Spot Photon from FreedomPop is a 4G hotspot thatgets you online for free. There's no catch. A free plan from FreedomPop is good for 500MB of data per month, with plenty of easy opportunities to earn more. Larger, inexpensive data plans are also available, and the Photon taps into Clearwire's 4G WiMAX network with aplomb.

And at some point next year, when it switches from Clearwire to Sprint's 4G LTE network, you'll need to replace your hotspot. But as it stands, the Freedom Spot Photon is an inexpensive, innovative way to get online, and well worthy of our Editors' Choice award.

Pricing and PlansHere's how it works. There are three different plans: Free, Casual, and Premiere. With the free plan, you get 500MB of data every month. After that, extra data costs $0.02 per 1MB (which works out to $20 per 1GB). Thing is, if you play your cards right, you may earn enough extra free data that you never go over.

FreedomPop has a number of ways for you to earn additional data. For starters, you get an additional 10MB of data for every friend you refer, up to 500MB per month. You can also share or request data from friends. But really, that can only get you so far. To that end, FreedomPop has a number of offers and surveys you can participate in to earn extra data. Signing up for the Chili's email list, for instance, scored me 22MB of free data and only took a few seconds to do. I even got a coupon for free chips and queso.

Offers range anywhere from 4MB of data to a whopping 2.94GB. Some of them require you to actually pay for merchandise or services, though most of them are free. All of them want your email address, however. Though paid plans are also available, this is how FreedomPop makes its money. Every offer you sign up for puts a couple of cents in FreedomPop's pockets and a few megabytes of data in your till. That's fine by me.

If you don't want to jump through hoops for your data, you may be interested in one of the paid plans. $17.99 per month gets you 2GB of data. After that, each additional 1MB costs just $0.01 (which works out to $10 per 1GB). $28.99 per month is good for 4GB of data, $34.99 for 5GB, and $59.99 for 10GB, all with the same $0.01 charge for each additional megabyte you go over. So while it may not be free, those are some pretty great prices when compared with carriers like AT&T or Verizon Wireless. They may offer faster 4G LTE, but plans start at $50 per month, and only get you 4 or 5GB of data.

Keep in mind that FreedomPop currently uses Clearwire's 4G WiMAX network, which only covers about a third of the U.S. population. Be sure to check out Clear's 4Gcoverage mapto see if service is available where you live and where you plan to travel. You'll also figure that out when you try to sign up with FreedomPopyou won't be able to join the beta if you don't live within Clear's coverage area.

You can easily chew through 500MB of data on a rainy afternoon spent watching Netflix. If you're looking to stream music or video, you're better off with an unlimited data plan from a carrier like Clear, which offers unlimited 4G data for $49.99 per month on the same network.And now that Virgin Mobile has access to that very same WiMAX network, it too is worth checking out for inexpensive, contract-free mobile broadband. You can get 2GB of 3G data for $35 per month, or 5GB for $55, all with unlimited 4G WiMAX data. Performance should be equal across the board.

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FreedomPop Freedom Spot Photon