Some folks have gotten emails from FreedomPop offering new "Premium" GSM plans. Premium is the term FP used for the cellular voice upgrade on their old Sprint plans, so this appears to be the first offers with cellular voice.
I haven't received the email, so I don't have a working link. Options are reported as
500m/500t/500Mb $9.99
Unlimited T&T/1Gb Data $19.99
Unlimited T/T/Data w/10Gb LTE Data $39.99
Cost appears to be the same as the standard Red Pocket offers, so not much to see anyway.
Here's a link to the $9.99 offer. I can only see it if I'm logged into an account before clicking:
(replace '10' at end of URL with '20' or '40' to see the more expensive offers.)
Just spit-balling, but doesn't Red Pocket AT&T lack iMessage support? Without further info, I'd expect the FreedomPop Premium plans to follow suit.
But, maybe not necessarily? FreedomPop already had carrier agreements in place with AT&T that had some unexpected features. (Thinking of the reported roaming that was a surprise on a budget carrier. But FP never had AT&T cellular voice under the old agreement.....)
I have read that RP (AT&T) MMS is not supported on iOS. iMessage activation only requires native SMS support.
I had premium voice on FP CDMA (Sprint) a while ago. That provided native cellular voice, but not native SMS/MMS. Interestingly, iMessage could be activated with the number assigned to the device by Sprint network, which was different than the FP# (CLEC Bandwidth.com). The Sprint-assigned number could NOT be direct-dialed for incoming calls.
Since this new offering apparently requires a new line/SIM, perhaps the phone number will be with AT&T instead of Bandwidth.com.
Very interesting information about FP CDMA Premium Voice. I never had it. Cool work-around! and nice research.
Personally, since the offers so far are priced the same as Red Pocket, I don't see a need for reinventing the wheel. I'm guessing they're standard AT&T lines.