Up to a point that might be considered a good thing for service providers who have made a business of prepaid, especially some of the regional providers.
But it never is too helpful when the "big guys," or at least some of them, decide they have to play in the prepaid segment, as Sprint now is doing.
The new "Common Cents" service is the fourth prepaid brand Sprint supports, after Boost Mobile, Virgin Mobile and Assurance Wireless, which is a government-subsidized cell phone program for people who are under or close to the poverty line.
Under the new plan, customers will pay seven cents per minute for phone calls and they will be charge seven cents per text message.
Wal-Mart is planning to sell phones, costing $20 to $70, in more than 700 stores.
Sprint will also give customers a break by rounding down on the minutes used in order to aattract more subscribers. Sprint says that "with minutes that round down after the first minute, not up, consumers get more minutes for their money."
In the first quarter of 2010, Sprint lost 578,000 postpaid subscribers. But it gained 348,000 prepaid customers.
Sprint also positions each of the prepaid brands in different segments. While Common Cents is geared toward value customers, who aren't looking for much beyond basic cell phone and texting service, Virgin Mobile's and Boost Mobile's services offer more data-centric plans that target the youth market.
TheVirgin Mobile and Boost brands have been offering flat-rate pricing for all-you-can-eat plans for $50 a month. Soon Virgin Mobile will also offer a $25 plan that comes with unlimited texting, e-mail, and Web surfing, plus 300 minutes a month of voice service. For $40 a month, customers can get 1,200 voice minutes.
4 comments:
Thank you for the wonderful article.
While some of the best deals in prepaid are to be found with the unlimited plans you mention here, for people who don't need that many minutes or texts there are plenty of options too. At the moment it seems that Net10 works out to be the cheapest for mid-level users. I went with them because of their free minutes on activation and clear call and text rates. Using their service I get away paying around $20 a month!
As a very heavy texter my Net10 plan at 5c per text is still cheaper than the new Sprint model. My calls at 10c per minute might be a little more expensive but not enough to have to change to Sprint and have to lay out cash for a new phone when I love my phone from Net10!
• PlatinumTel is one prepaid provider to consider for valuable, flexible plans. Their new Real Paygo plan is an a la carte plan that has the cheapest rates in pay-as-you-go, allowing users to pay only for the services they use and avoid commitment. Talk is just 5 cents a minute, text is 2 cents a text and 10 cents per megabyte of web service. This is half that of other carriers’ rates! If an unlimited plan is preferred, PlatinumTel’s is just $50 for talk and text and an extra $10 for unlimited web.
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