History
Pocket Communications began in San Antonio, TX in June 2006, including the Pocket mascot Harry the chimp and has followed an expansion strategy towards south Texas ever since. Besides covering the greater San Antonio area, they service to the north along major roads, reaching as far as Fredericksburg, Texas, and to the south including Laredo, Texas and the Rio Grande Valley. Also, an unconfirmed call to Pocket customer service suggests that other major Texas markets will be covered in the future. Pocket started service in Hartford, Connecticut and Springfield, Massachusetts. Pocket seems to pursue a monolithic coverage model like Sprint or T-Mobile, where all markets are connected by cellular coverage, rather than having islands of service across the nation like MetroPCS and Cricket do. They have now released roaming capability via a partnership with MetroPCS to boost coverage and sold at most Pocket stores in Rio Grande valley and San Antonio TX in over 120 locations including 42 local HEB stores. According to information advertised by Pocket over 170,000 have subscribed to its first month free service as of May 12, 2008, just after twenty months of being in the business. 1xRTT data access was available while unlimited directory assistance was also available at an additional charge. Additionally, Pocket offers a prepaid funds account, also known as the Value Pocket, from which can be drawn such features as international calling, long distance, outgoing text messaging (incoming messages are free) and picture messages if such features are not added to the subscriber's plan. Pocket recently expanded its operations to the northeastern part of the United States adding a regional headquarters in Bloomfield, CT and are now in the process of extending their coverage to Corpus Christi, Texas. In September 2010, Pocket announced that they would shutter their operations in Connecticut and Massachusetts due to the weak economy, competition and high cost of building an infrastructure. Pocket announced that service in these areas would be discontinued in late October. The New England spectrum and network were sold to MetroPCS after being shut down. MetroPCS relaunched service on the former Pocket network in March 2011.
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