Prepaid
Wireless Tracker - January 2011
Issue
Hi,
Prepaid wireless is a growing and truly exciting industry. At
Prepaid
Wireless Guide I try to provide you with in-depth information that
isn't
readily available anywhere else. Its content is original, and
created
from firsthand experience working in the prepaid wireless industry.
This monthly email provides you with a quick glance at what's in the
news so
that you can easily keep informed. I believe in brief,
to-the-point
summaries/commentary so that you can move onto other tasks in your day.
Each snippet includes a link to the original story should you
be
interested in the full details.
If you like this e-zine, please do a friend and me a big favor and "pay
it
forward." If a friend DID forward this to you and if you like
what
you read,
please subscribe by visiting here.
MetroPCS
Expands 4G Footprint
Twice
It’s great to see MetroPCS expand its 4G coverage, however, without any
4G
smartphones or broadband devices, in all
honestly, it’s really quite
uninspiring.
Page Plus Adds
Yearly Plan Option
Prepaid
Reviews (blog)
This is really an $80 topup card with a 2,000 minute value that doesn’t
expire
for 365 days. While
this is not a new
concept in the prepaid market, it’s definitely good to see carriers
coming
around to the inevitable conclusion that customers should get
additional value
if they fork over more money for a given topup.
Good job Page Plus!
T-mobile Comet
(prepaid Android smartphone)
By bert5
While most T-Mobile phones that are off contract can be used with
T-Mobile prepaid,
it’s good to note an additional Android option for prepaid. The proliferation
of
prepaid smartphones in
2010 is extremely encouraging.
Leap Wireless
CEO Sees Acceleration In
Migration To New Phones
NASDAQ
It’s really fantastic to see the numbers indicating that prepaid has
truly evolved
to more mainstream users, and that they are certainly interested,
and
even
demanding, more functional smartphones.
Throwing humility to the wind for a moment, I think it’s
fair at this
point to say “I told you so” ;-).
Verizon Offers
Specialized, No-Contract Plans for Google's Chrome OS
FierceWireless
Prepaid data options are most certainly always welcome.
That said, I’m not sure that we’ve really
seen any Chrome OS notebooks/netbooks to speak of, nor would we expect
them to
be treated any differently in terms of data pricing, right? I suppose the nature of
Chrome (i.e.
cloud-based computing) could result in greater data usage, which is
likely the
distinction of significance to the hosting carrier.
U.S. Cellular Fills
Out Prepaid Plans
RCR
Wireless News
Some may not consider this to be newsworthy as they
really appear to
be playing catch-up for the most part, and don’t offer any pricing that
is
particularly competitive, however, it’s good to see that fans of U.S.
Cellular
now have more prepaid options.
Degrees of BYOD
on Prepaid
Wireless
While some information in this article is not accurate (ex. only a
select
number of legacy Sprint CDMA phones can be used on Boost CDMA), the
general
idea of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is something I hold near and dear
to my
heart. I understand
that using a handset
that hasn’t been specifically designed, optimized, and tested for a
given
carrier can pose some problems, and even costly support issues, from a
customer
perspective, it’s really a great concept.
When it’s feasible, I’d like to host a table that shows
specifically what
phones can be used with which carriers, and what features will work and
not
work. Unfortunately,
clarity around this
topic still doesn’t exist.
Sprint's
Postpaid vs. Prepaid
Customers –
Who's More Valuable?
NASDAQ
This is an interesting, not to mention age-old discussion. Even though postpaid
customers may deliver higher
revenue over the lifetime of a customer (largely due to the contract
locking
them in!), prepaid is what the market is demanding.
In other words, it’s someone irrelevant which
drives more revenue; carriers need to provide products and services
that
customers want, and there’s no doubt that prepaid is where the interest
lies. The ONLY
value of postpaid is the
handset subsidy and selection. Selection
will continue to improve rapidly, while the cost of the handset will
take more
time to decline as technology/manufacturing costs continue to decline.
Yes, there will
be free Wi-Fi for MetroPCS | Prepaid Reviews
By Joe
Including software that automatically connects to WiFi hotspots is a
nice
idea. However, keep
in mind that with a good
solid 3G, and later hopefully 4G network, WiFi shouldn’t be necessary. In other words, offloading
data traffic to
WiFi mostly benefits carriers by avoiding network capacity issues, a
poor
customer experience due to low speeds from network congestion, and
ultimately
costly upgrades. I
largely see this a twisted
marketing campaign to market a “feature” that is only necessary largely
due to
poor quality cellular networks and/or
performance challenges, and
weak/expensive overages with non-unlimited data plans; so don’t be
fooled!
Leap Offers
Unlimited Music Download
Zacks.com
Cricket announced that it will include Muve unlimited music in $55 and
up
service plans. I’ve
seen
carrier music
services launched time and time again with little success. We’ll see how Cricket does. With an easier way to
access iTunes from
feature phones and smartphones (Android and Blackberry), these types of
services seem difficult to sustain.
Though free unlimited downloads certainly does have a
compelling ring to
it!
What's New at
Prepaid-Wireless-Guide.com?
- Added
new 4G Wireless page (4G
landing page)
Comments? Ideas? Feedback? I'd love to hear from
you. Just reply to
this zine and tell me what you think!
Cheers!
PrepaidWirelessGuy
