Prepaid Market Cracks With Verizon Smartphone Offerings

Prepaid customers traditionally have had to live with a selection of devices that intentionally did not include the top devices sold in the postpaid market. But that has taken a huge change with Verizon's new willingness to sell even its leading devices on a prepaid basis.

At least at Verizon, the difference between prepaid and postpaid offerings is based more on payment options and subsidized or full price phones than anything else. That is a big change, indeed.

Verizon Wireless also has launched a new "3G Prepaid" data package that lets customers access unlimited data on select 3G smartphones and multimedia phones for $30 monthly access.

Multimedia phone customers also have the option of selecting a new $10 monthly data package for 25 MB per month ($.20/MB overage). These new prepaid data packages are available at Verizon Wireless stores already, and will be available online at www.verizonwireless.com beginning Sept. 28, 2010.

Supported smartphone devices include:

BlackBerry Curve 8330
BlackBerry Curve 8530
BlackBerry Storm 9530
BlackBerry Storm2 9550
BlackBerry Tour 9630
BlackBerry Bold 9650

Palm Pre Plus
Palm Pixi Plus

DROID by Motorola
Motorola DEVOUR
DROID X by Motorola
DROID 2 by Motorola
DROID Eris by HTC
DROID Incredible by HTC
LG Ally

3G Multimedia phones available include:

LG enV TOUCH
LG enV 3
LG Chocolate TOUCH
LG VX8360
Samsung Alias 2
Samsung Renown
Nokia Twist
Casio EXILIM