Phone bills – Arrgh! Aren’t you just sick of them? If, like me, you are, then you might just be interested to hear about the new offer from FreedomPop, which offers “free” mobile broadband services in certain areas. Now, the little upstart carrier wannabe has done something totally ambitious – its just gone and launched when it claims is the first completely free mobile phone service in the US.

You heard that right. FreedomPop’s new mobile phone service will be totally and utterly, 100% free with no money to pay at all for anything. Free talk time, free SMS, free data… up to a point, at least.

As expected from a “free” service, FreedomPop’s basic deal doesn’t give you a whole lot of data or talk time, but what it does give you – 500MB of data a month, 200 mins talk time and unlimited texts – won’t cost so much as a dime. What’s more, there’s potential to earn even more free minutes and data by completing a bunch of surveys or referring friends to the service, while users can choose to extend their plan to unlimited talk time for just $9.99 a month – with no contract, by the way, so you’re free to drop out anytime.

So how has FreedomPop done this? Simple, rather than using traditional cell phone technology, its entire service is offered using VoIP, which allows calls to be placed over the internet. FreedomPop therefore becomes the first US carrier to offer a 100% VoIP service over the cellular network. To begin with, it’ll be offering 3G and 4G services nationwide on the Sprint network, together with 4G WiMAX on Clear, although this network has limited availability.

On the face of it, FreedomPop sounds like an extremely good option for cost-conscious smartphone users, but…

There’s a few ‘buts’ actually. For one thing, FreedomPop hasn’t yet said what kind of devices might be able to run on its network. All it did say was that it would have a range of “popular Android handsets” to choose from. Now, I could be wrong but the very fact that they’re not screaming about having the Galaxy SIIII or SIII or any other notable model of late is down to one thing – it won’t be available. More likely, we’ll see some far less spectacular options.

The second ‘but’ is the data allowance. 500MB is fine if you don’t use lots of data, but for anyone that spends too long on Facebook or uses their phone for work, this probably won’t suffice. And in that case, you’re going to need to purchase a plan for more data, starting at $18/month for 2GB, or $29/month for 4GB more. Alternatively you can just run past your 500MB allowance and pay the two cents a megabyte cost for doing so – doesn’t sound like much, but spend a few minutes on Google Maps at that price and you’ll soon start thinking differently…

One last issue is with Sprint’s network itself. Whilst availability isn’t a problem, the network itself is notoriously sluggish when compared to more established alternatives, so don’t be surprised if your apps are incredibly slow or if your calls keep dropping, especially when out somewhere in the sticks.

For those that don’t use much data, or any data in fact, and don’t really care about having a flashy new phone to show off, FreedomPop’s offer might be worth looking at. But for everyone else (and let’s bear in mind that T-Mobile just did away with contracts), in all honesty it’s probably worth spending more to get a more reliable service – you get what you pay for after all!