The still somewhat mysterious FreedomPop wireless broadband service is slowly revealing more of its plans. The company had previously said it planned to offer free access to its service and now GigaOM has received more information from FreedomPop"s marketing head, Tony Miller.
According to Miller, users will be able to access up to 1GB of data free of charge each month at 4G speeds, thanks to its new partnership with Clearwire"s WiMAX network. Each additional megabyte will cost one cent. However, the interesting thing is that users will be able actually trade data usage with each other.
FreedomPop will allow users who are not close to using their free monthly data allowance to give part of their bandwidth to other users who are approaching their cap, thus helping heavy bandwidth users to save some extra charges. Users will also get larger free data caps if they refer more people to their service.
FreedomPop also plans to sell a WiMAX shell for the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S that would allow those 3G-based smartphones to get 4G access. The shell would also serve as a mobile hotspot for up to eight other devices.
So how in the world will FreedomPop make money? Miller says that the company plans to offer additional services that would require a fee but there"s no word on what these services might be like. It is hoped that FreedomPop will launch later in 2012.