Cricket Wireless To Shut Down Its CDMA Network And Replace Muve Music With Deezer

Cricket Wireless, a subsidiary of AT&T's, has confirmed that it will discontinue Muve Music beginning next month. In addition to that, the prepaid wireless carrier is also planning to get rid of its legacy CDMA network.

However, it is not all bad news. Muve Music will be replaced by the budding music streaming service Deezer, which will be made available to subscribers of Cricket Wireless starting January 31st.

Deezer has completed the acquisition of Muve Music's assets from Cricket's parent company, AT&T. The music streaming platform will provide subscription music for Cricket subscribers for $6 per month.

Not only will music-loving Cricket customers enjoy Deezer's music streaming services, they also get to have download access to a catalogue of about 35 million songs. As for Cricket Wireless, they get to swap Muve Music which only got two million listeners, with Deezer which currently has 16 million users worldwide.

Subscribers of Cricket Wireless will be given a free 15-day trial on Deezer before signing up for a formal paid subscription. Those customers who are currently active on Muve Music can enjoy a free month trial on Deezer until the end of March. By April, however, they will need to subscribe to Deezer on order to continue enjoying the music streaming service.

As for Cricket's CDMA network, it will be discontinued sometime in March so that the Cricket can get on with restructuring the spectrum it acquired from Leap Wireless back in 2014.

Cricket had offered service using Leap's CDMA network before, but after AT&T started taking over both carriers in 2014, the brand has shifted its subscribers to AT&T's GSM network, which uses a different technology.

The areas most likely to be affected with the termination of the CDMA network by March and April of this year will include:

• Washington, DC
• Chicago and Northern Illinois in Illinois
• Atlantic City, New Jersey
• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse in New York
• South Bend, Indiana
• Little Rock, Fayetteville, and Fort Smith in Arkansas
• Wilmington, Delaware
• Baltimore, Maryland

On May to June of this year, the affected areas will include:

• Oklahoma City and Tulsa in Oklahoma
• Wichita, Kansas
• Albuquerque and Las Cruces in New Mexico
• Las Vegas, Nevada

By August and September of this year, all locations not mentioned above will no longer have access to the CDMA network. 

Subscribers who are utilizing the old networks in affected locations will have their service discontinued by billing cycle starting on March 15th.