It’s just one more way kids are making cell phone service affordable.

This post was taken from Prepaidreviews.com - a top source of information on prepaid cell phones and prepaid providers like Verizon INPulse, Cricket Wireless and more.

Their new entry-level plan is $30, and like all of their other plans, includes unlimited anytime minutes. However, this does not include long distance calls. So if you don’t do any calling outside your local calling area, this could be a superb value. It does not include text messaging, either.

Cricket’s services expand as you reach each price point. The $35 plan offers long distance; the $40 plan adds text messaging; the $45 plan adds Web; the $50 plan adds 30 roaming minutes; and the $60 plan adds 200 roaming minutes.

Good to see Cricket staying competitive as they expand their services to more markets in America.

This post was taken from Prepaidreviews.com - a top source of information on prepaid cell phones and prepaid providers like Verizon INPulse, Cricket Wireless and more.

I’m not the only one that’s a bit puzzled by the idea. Says NERA Economic Consulting analyst Christian Dippon: “The synergies are pretty straight-forward: Virgin’s strong brand name and excellent distribution channels will provide Helio with the much needed market boost. What Virgin gets from the deal is somewhat less clear. Naturally, it allows Virgin to expand its target market from discount subscribers to include teenage, gadget-savvy kids, yet it is unclear whether this will help Virgin Mobile to sufficiently boost its net adds, particularly in the discount segment.”

The idea, I would think, is that this would give Virgin the opportunity to add a postpaid service, as they have in Canada. The merger with Helio, I suppose, would give them a slew of high-end phones to offer these postpaid subscribers.

But if that’s all Virgin’s getting, the deal seems a bit lopsided. Then again, we have no idea what the terms would be, so for all we know Virgin could be getting a sweet deal on this. Or, rather, they might be holding out for one.

As I mentioned previously regarding this arrangement, I wonder how the converged company would go about purchasing minutes from Sprint. Would their current MVNO agreements still be valid, allowing them to purchase a ton of minutes wholesale? Or would the merger force them to sign a new deal with Sprint? I think that factor will play a large role in merger talks.

This post was taken from Prepaidreviews.com - a top source of information on prepaid cell phones and prepaid providers like Verizon INPulse, Cricket Wireless and more.

Ah, but there’s more. And this is just a rumor. Repeat, just a rumor. But we could be seeing an advanced version of this system, whereby you can block texts and calls from specific numbers. Currently, Alltel is the only major carrier to offer this service. Considering T-Mobile’s spot in the marketplace, it’s a feature they should make sure to have. Anything to get the small advantages over the big companies, right?

This post was taken from Prepaidreviews.com - a top source of information on prepaid cell phones and prepaid providers like Verizon INPulse, Cricket Wireless and more.

There’s probably a long way to go in this, so stay tuned.

This post was taken from Prepaidreviews.com - a top source of information on prepaid cell phones and prepaid providers like Verizon INPulse, Cricket Wireless and more.

Chicago detective Timothy J. Murphy wrote a letter to state and federal lawmakers two years ago complaining that many of his homicide investigations were hindered by prepaid or pay-as-you-go phones.

“We’ve got 255 million wireless phones in circulation right now,” said Joe Farren, a spokesman for the Wireless Association. “It’s going to be terribly difficult to prove whether someone is providing false identification.”

Of course, the other end is that this could set a precedent. If you can require ID for the purchase of prepaid phones, you can require ID for other purchases. So lawmakers will have to tread carefully.

This post was taken from Prepaidreviews.com - a top source of information on prepaid cell phones and prepaid providers like Verizon INPulse, Cricket Wireless and more.

The difference, really, is that Leap acquired a bit more spectrum in the AWS auction, which is why it might take them a bit longer to roll out their services. Leap’s markets include Seattle, Minneapolis, and New Orleans, as well as the “beltway” of Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington D.C., Richmon, and Virginia Beach.

Eventually Metro hopes to sell only its dual-band AWS-PCS handsets, which can seamlessly switch between the two networks. “By the time we get to the northeast we hope to have our line-up AWS,” says COO Tom Keys.

This post was taken from Prepaidreviews.com - a top source of information on prepaid cell phones and prepaid providers like Verizon INPulse, Cricket Wireless and more.

This post was taken from Prepaidreviews.com - a top source of information on prepaid cell phones and prepaid providers like Verizon INPulse, Cricket Wireless and more.

This would give Virgin Mobile a prepaid and a postpaid service. Because both MVNOs run on the Sprint network, they could make handsets from both companies available across the service. The only problem, I suppose, is how they would go forward with obtaining minutes from Sprint. Surely, they don’t have the same wholesale deal with the company.

mocoNews talked to VM CEO Dan Schulman earlier in the week. While he couldn’t comment directly, he did send a hint of what’s to come:

“We don’t comment on any rumors out there, but we have said that we believe that there are opportunities for us in terms of non-organic growth, such as another MVNO, or capability set that we might be able to avail ourselves of…Certainly there are a lot of opportunities that we see, and we think some of them are intriguing for us, but it’s a matter of what makes the most sense.”

Clearly, we’ll have more on this as it develops.

This post was taken from Prepaidreviews.com - a top source of information on prepaid cell phones and prepaid providers like Verizon INPulse, Cricket Wireless and more.

AT&T

The nation’s No. 1 carrier was the first to up the stakes in prepaid. Right around the time the Prepaid Reviews blog was born, AT&T added a number of options to their GoPhone Pay As You Go service. This was right before the iPhone release, and since the upgrades were mainly on the data side, conjecture was that the two were related.

Originally, AT&T’s plans were pretty straight forward on the Pay As You Go end. You could pay 25 cents a minute, or for a dollar a day you could slap that down to 10 cents a minute. Further options, like text messaging bundles, were thin in the beginning. But then came the improvements.

They added two MediaNet plans, two SMS bundles, and an enormous package of night and weekend minutes (3,000, and only for the $1/day Pay As You Go subscribers). All the sudden, there were a good number of options for AT&T prepaid users. They didn’t have to market to a niche; they just offered more choices, which was a likely cause of a boost in prepaid subscribers.

Give people more, but don’t be confusing about it. It sounds like a quality mantra to me. I’m sure AT&T GoPhone customers agree.

Verizon

About five months after AT&T announced the revamping of their prepaid offering, their biggest competitor, Verizon, jumped into the game with two new pay as you go plans.

The issue here was that they axed their popular Easy Pay plans. These resembled monthly postpaid plans, but were a bit more expensive, and were obviously on a prepaid basis. In their place, Verizon expanded their INpulse plan. The original INpulse offered 10 cent minutes and texts, plus unlimited mobile to mobile and unlimited night minutes. The catch: a buck a day. So what came next?

They added two INpulse plans, one that charged a $1.99 daily access fee, and one that charged a $2.99 fee. That seems like a whole ton, right? If you use your phone every day, it amounts to $59.70 or $89.70 for a 30 day month. And that’s before you make a single call!

However, the per minute rates were drastically dropped. The $1.99 plan knocked minutes and messages down to 5 cents each, and the $2.99 plan put them all the way at 2 cents. As with the original INpulse, night and mobile to mobile minutes were unlimited. These plans really amounted to a haven for people who call a lot, but for for one reason or another won’t sign a two year contract.

They’ve since added unlimited weekends to the deal, which makes INpulse a bit more palatable. Some say they downgraded by removing Easy Pay. But for big talkers INpulse still provides great value.

Boost (for Sprint)

I know I say it all the time, but just for good measure, Boost Mobile is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sprint, and acts as its prepaid division. So, as you can imagine, they paid a bit more mind to prepaid, since it is a separate brand. And with a long list of monthly plans, and an attractive pay as you go plan (20 cents per peak minute, 10 cents per off-peak minute and mobile to mobile minute).

In February, they decided to get in on the daily access fee plan. I guess people don’t mind the charge, since Boost has plenty of good plans that don’t require you to pay a dollar a day. In any case, theirs is the $1/Day Chat Plan, and it is for pay as you go customers. With the fee comes unlimited night and weekends, unlimited mobile to mobile (to Sprint and Boost), and unlimited text messaging. All other calls are 10 cents per minute.

While Boost had already been one of the better prepaid companies in terms of customer choices, the $1/day Chat plan really sets it apart from the rest. Their basic service is is cheaper than AT&T’s, and their $1/day plan gives you more features. Far more features, really.

T-Mobile

Despite Boost’s advantage of having more choices, the feedback I’ve gotten says that T-Mobile has the most favorable prepaid service of the Big Four. Their Gold Rewards system is nice, giving you more minutes on all the cards you purchase in the future. Still, there wasn’t a lot of flexibility in T-Mobile’s plans.

Late in April, T-Mobile introduced a pay per day plan of their own. As with the other carriers, they added a $1/day fee. The benefit of theirs? Unlimited 7 p.m. night minutes, unlimited mobile to mobile, and 10 cents per minute otherwise. So it falls a bit short of Boost’s plan, but the unlimited nights puts it above AT&T’s plan. Then again, the sheer number of AT&T customers raises the value of their plan, since it means more people you can call for free with mobile to mobile.

Knocking out the little guy?

It might appear that these improved prepaid offerings might signal a further downturn of the MVNO market in the U.S. After all, why would the carriers continue to sell minutes to resellers, when they’re now competing on a similar level as resellers?

This is a topic we’ll cover a bit more next week. If anything, we could be seeing an upswing in the U.S. MVNO market. If true, these improvements in major carrier prepaid offerings could just be their way of grabbing a piece of an emerging market.

This post was taken from Prepaidreviews.com - a top source of information on prepaid cell phones and prepaid providers like Verizon INPulse, Cricket Wireless and more.