• Cricket launched 5G home internet using AT&T's existing mobile network
  • New customers can bundle home internet and mobile from $75 a month

The fact

AT&T's Cricket Wireless launched Cricket 5G Home Internet on 16 September, providing fixed wireless broadband over the AT&T 5G network. The service includes unlimited data, no annual contract and self-installation through a Cricket gateway.

New customers can bundle home internet with a Cricket mobile plan from $75 a month after the stated AutoPay discount. Existing Cricket mobile customers can add home internet for $45 a month after AutoPay, a $15 monthly bundle saving. The gateway costs $49.99 plus tax.

Availability varies by address. Cricket also says it may temporarily slow data when the network is busy and, in rare cases where a customer's usage contributes to congestion, substantially reduce speeds for at least 30 minutes.

The assessment

Cricket is entering home broadband without building another local access network. The service uses AT&T's existing 5G infrastructure, so adding a household does not require a new fibre or cable connection to that property. The customer instead shares radio capacity with other traffic using the mobile network.

That lowers the infrastructure needed to reach another home, but it also sets the limit on how widely the service can be sold. A household consuming video and other broadband traffic places a much heavier load on a cell than an ordinary mobile connection. Availability and performance therefore depend on how much capacity AT&T can allocate at each location.

For BTW readers, Cricket gives AT&T another retail channel for capacity already available on its mobile network. The important test is whether AT&T can add fixed wireless households without creating noticeable congestion for either home-internet or mobile users.

What to watch

Watch Cricket's address-level availability, subscriber growth and peak-hour performance as take-up increases. Changes to network-management terms would show how AT&T is balancing home broadband against mobile traffic. Separate reporting of Cricket home-internet customers would also reveal how much demand the prepaid brand adds beyond AT&T Internet Air.