Thursday, February 7, 2013
FreedomPop Fuels Up Free Broadband With $4.3M In More Funding
FreedomPop, the provider of free, broadband Internet services backed by the founders of Skype, has just fueled up with some additional capital, saying this morning that it has raised $4.3M in a Series A1 round. The funding came from existing investors DCM and Mangrove Capital. FreedomPop, which is led by Stephen Stokols, said it has now raised a total of $11.2M in funding.
As part of the new funding round, FreedomPop said it has extended the viral sharing aspects of its service, and will up the amount of free broadband it provides for sharing the company's details with friends to 50MB per user, up from an earlier 10MB.
FreedomPop is looking to make a dent in the telecom industry's current model of fixed data plans, saying that most user are not consuming nearly as much data as they are charged for; instead, FreedomPop is offering up free data, coupled with lower-than-prepaid rates when users exceed their data allocation. The firm is gambling the allure of "free" will offset the very high marketing and customer allocation costs that most telecoms deal with when signing up customers. The company has its eyes on more than just data; the company inked a deal with textPlus last month to bring voice to its service, and the firm told us that it's looking to disrupt telecom, including launching its own home-based broadband service.
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