AT&T prepaid brand Cricket announced two deals with retailers that will add more than 3,000 locations to the carrier’s network.
On Sunday, Cricket said it expanded retail distribution with electronics store Best Buy to include more than 1,000 additional store locations throughout the United States. The carrier said it will bring an initial selection of smartphones to those Best Buy locations and the company’s online store within the next two weeks. Additional smartphones will be added to the lineup over the course of the next two months, Cricket said.
On Monday, Cricket also announced a retail distribution deal with lease-to-own retailer Aaron’s. The agreement will bring Cricket plan options to nearly 2,000 Aaron’s locations over the next three months, the carrier said. Cricket said Aaron’s customer will be able to activate BYOD smartphones or devices purchased at Aaron’s on Cricket’s network using the carrier’s Universal SIM Card Kit.
Including more than 4,000 of its own stores, Cricket said the deals bring its total number of retail locations to more than 12,000 outlets.
The deals come as Cricket looks to maintain the momentum that saw it rake in record prepaid net addition figures for AT&T.
“Cricket has energized the prepaid space for us,” AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said during the company’s fourth quarter earnings call.
Alongside AT&T’s other prepaid brand, GoPhone, Cricket pulled in 469,000 prepaid subscriber net adds in the fourth quarter 2015 and 1.4 million prepaid net add for the full year 2015.
