Cricket hops into bed with RadioShack for no-contract wireless plans

RadioShack is about to become more than just your local electronics retailer.

Starting tomorrow, RadioShack will offer contract-free cell phone plans with pre-paid carrier Cricket Wireless. The service, dubbed No-Contract Wireless, will offer plans for both feature phones and smartphones: Feature phone plans start at $25 a month, while the most basic smartphone plan will run for $40 a month. Both plans come with throttled bandwidth, so don’t sign up if limited speeds aren’t your thing.

In addition to the plans, RadioShack will also offer No-Contract Wireless subscribers free access to Cricket’s Muve Music streaming service.

RadioShack will start things off on Wednesday with the Huawei Mercury Ice and Huawei Pllar, two budget phones priced at $149 and $39, respectively. While neither phone is likely to turn heads, both come free of contract, which will automatically make them more attractive to the price-conscious. RadioShack says that the pair will be joined by two others devices by the end of the month.

Could one of those devices be the iPhone? Earlier this year, Cricket became the first pre-paid service provider to offer the Apple device, which means it’s not entirely unlikely that No-Contract Wireless will go a similar route with the iPhone 4 or 4S.