Prepaid Reviews Blog

Cricket announces Samsung Admire 2, Galaxy Discover, Galaxy S4 launch, and LTE roaming

Joe — Thu, 23 May 2013 12:30:42 +0000

It was a big day at CTIA 2014 for Cricket wireless as they announced a few new handsets plus an LTE roaming agreement that could certainly help their stock. For starters they’ll launch the Samsung Galaxy S4 on June 7th for $599.99. Thankfully, for those who don’t have $600 to burn, they’ll have a financing option that will let you walk out of store with the S4 for $59.99. That will increase your monthly payment, of course, but it will cut down on the wallet shock of shelling out that much for a phone. For those who don’t want to pay that much, period, for a smartphone, Cricket announced two more affordable Samsung models.

The Admire 2 and the Galaxy Discover are nothing to write home about. The Admire 2 does run Android 4.1 and has a 4-inch display, so it’s not that antiquated. (And in any case, many consumers like the 4-inch form factor over the bulkier phones Samsung has been promoting lately.) The Discover is a throw back with a 3.5-inch display and running Android 4.0. Cricket did not announce dates or pricing on these, but expect them to be in the under $150 range. The Discover could be as cheap as $50, but probably will cost $100. (And would be overpriced at that point.)

We learned a few months ago that Cricket had signed an LTE roaming deal with an undisclosed network. They announced today that they’d flip on the switch later this year, allowing LTE customers to roam onto other networks. Sprint appears to be the primary partner, sicne it is the only carrier to use LTE band 25. The Galaxy S4 will be the first roaming LTE handset for Cricket.

Cricket has been aggressive not only in its announcements, but also in its marketing tactics. Along with the new phones and LTE roaming service, Cricket also unveiled its new Half is More marketing campaign aimed at the big carriers. It’s pretty neat until you take a step back and realize that Cricket’s network covers probably half the area Verizon and AT&T do. Half, indeed.

This post originated at PrepaidReviews.com - The number one resource for Tracfone Prepaid information on the web!

Boost and Virgin Mobile pick up the Galaxy S3

Joe — Wed, 22 May 2013 12:30:08 +0000

Not to be outdone by Straight Talk, which added the Samsung Galaxy S3 last week, both Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile will pick up the Samsung’s 2012 flagship device. Parent company already has the Galaxy S4, and is offering the S3 for free with a two-year contract. The S3 will go on sale with both Virgin and Boost in June, though the company declined to provide pricing or specific availability date. If they can pull it under the $300 mark, they could attract a number of customers looking for a top-end phone at something of an affordable price.

This post originated at PrepaidReviews.com - The number one resource for Tracfone Prepaid information on the web!

Tracfone parent America Movil to acquire Page Plus

Joe — Tue, 21 May 2013 12:30:40 +0000

Delivered by mainstream outlets, the news of Tracfone parent America Movil buying another MVNO looks benign enough. Headlines suggest Movil purchased Start Wireless, which is true. What many people don’t know is that Start Wireless owns Page Plus Cellular. That changes the game a bit. Page Plus is a relatively popular MVNO, one that is well known among veteran prepaid subscribers. Something tells me that the Page Plus faithful aren’t going to like this acquisition. You can read some initial griping at the Howard Forums thread.

Around this time last year America Movil acquired Simple Mobile, a relatively new and popular MVNO operating on the T-Mobile network. While Simple Mobile surely didn’t account for it, Movil has experienced enormous growth in the periods since it has added SM. With prepaid growing, with smartphones specifically, it’s clear that Movil wants to corner as many markets as possible.

One issue that stands out is that of customer service. Page Plus keeps its call centers in the US, while Movil outsources its. Chances are we’ll see Page Plus start using Movil’s customer service centers, which will turn of many of the Page Plus faithful. You can read more about Page Plus and its customer service practices in a Page Plus feature we published back in 2008.

The deal could close within the next month or so, so we’ll get a quick idea of what will change. While we really don’t know yet, I’m sure that Page Plus customers aren’t happy right now.

Via Total Telecom.

This post originated at PrepaidReviews.com - The number one resource for Tracfone Prepaid information on the web!

Straight Talk adds Samsung Galaxy S3

Joe — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:30:53 +0000

Strange, I saw this on the Straight Talk website last week, but it didn’t really click that it was something new. Lo and behold, the Straight Talk blog announced on Friday that they were indeed selling the Samsung Galaxy SIII. We needn’t run down the specs for it at this point; nearly every carrier, prepaid and postpaid, carries it at this point. It’s actually a great time to get one, since it’s getting discounted with the Galaxy S4 about to hit markets nationwide. It will cost you $439.99, which isn’t half bad for a non-subsidized phone.

This post originated at PrepaidReviews.com - The number one resource for Tracfone Prepaid information on the web!

Verizon again increases data allotment for prepaid plans

Joe — Fri, 17 May 2013 12:30:35 +0000

It appears that the nation’s largest carrier understands the opportunities in prepaid. For the past year or so Verizon prepaid has made many moves that cater to a prepaid crowd. While their efforts started off as typically overpriced big carrier offerings, they’ve wizened up and started offering more data and more plans. Their latest move adds even more data to their prepaid smartphone plans. The $60 smartphone plan now gets 2GB of data monthly, up from 500MB. The $70 plan now gets 4GB, up form 2GB. Remember, these smartphone plans work only on 3G EVDO and not Verizon’s 4G LTE network. These plans will be available to consumers on June 6th.

Via FierceWireless.

This post originated at PrepaidReviews.com - The number one resource for Tracfone Prepaid information on the web!

MetroPCS to reach 100 million more, thanks to T-Mobile

Joe — Thu, 16 May 2013 12:30:03 +0000

While the fundamental services offered by T-Mobile and MetroPCS won’t change any time soon, MetroPCS will realize one enormous benefit following the merger. They will cover 100 million additional potential customers by the end of 2014, starting “very quickly” according to T-Mobile CFO Braxton Carter, who previously held the same position with MetroPCS. For a carrier that exists only in select markets across the country, expansion of this magnitude could bring enormous gains. As long as they don’t come at the expense of T-Mobile customers, it could be a big, and underreported, win in this merger.

Via FierceWireless.

This post originated at PrepaidReviews.com - The number one resource for Tracfone Prepaid information on the web!

What we missed: AT&T prepaid, Zact MVNO, Consumer Cellular

Joe — Tue, 14 May 2013 12:30:27 +0000

After a much-needed week away, let’s catch up on some prepaid wireless stories from the last week:

Sprint MVNO Zact brings custom usage. Do you use all the voice minute in your plan? All of your texts? Do you max out your data usage? Chances are you don’t. Zact, a new MVNO, aims to change that. They feature a sliding scale of plans that fit anyone’s patterns. When you go to their plans page you can pick a custom level of talk, text, and data. It sounds like a great concept.

Even better: you can change your plan on the fly, even mid-month. Think you’re going over on your data? Just bump up your plan and pay the difference. Even better than that: if you don’t hit your data level, you get reverted to the plan that you fit and get a credit for the next month. So if you pay for 2GB of data but use only 1.4GB, you get credited the difference between the 2GB plan you paid for and the 1.5GB plan you needed.

There are some limitations. For instance, you have to pay a monthly maintenance fee of $4.99. THey also have only two phones at the moment, though Zact representatives claim they will have “iconic devices” in the future. Make sure to read the entire CNET article to get an idea of what Zact does, and why they don’t want to be called an MVNO (even though they are).

AT&T launches Aio Wireless prepaid brand. The big thing, it seems, is for big carriers to launch off-brand prepaid services. Sprint has done this for years. T-Mobile got into it with GoSmart Mobile earlier this year. They have a number of plans for both smartphones and feature phones. The smartphone plans include $55 for 2GB of data and $70 for a whopping 7GB of data. Even after customers hit their limits, their speeds are throttled instead of discontinued.

The launch is limited to three markets — Houston, Orlando, and Tampa — but they say they’ll roll out to more cities in the coming weeks. It also appears that there are differences between offerings in each city. You can check out this FierceWireless article for more.

Consumer Cellular lands two new smartphones. Finally, Consumer Cellular announced two new smartphnones, the LG 930 and the Samsung Exhilarate. Both are actually pretty good devices. The 930 features a dual-core 1.5GHz processor and a 4.5-inch screen, while the Exhilarate has a 4-inch display with a 1.2GHz processor. The former is $300 while the latter is half that at $150. (Via Phone Scoop.)

This post originated at PrepaidReviews.com - The number one resource for Tracfone Prepaid information on the web!

Approach Boost Mobile iPhone rumors with caution

Joe — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 19:06:05 +0000

We have seen it before, so pardon me if I view it with a skeptical eye. For the past year or so, @evleaks has provided plenty of valuable information about upcoming phones, particularly for prepaid carriers. We’ve cited them on a number of occasions, and they tend to come through. So you can imagine people got excited when @evlinks tweeted about the iPhone coming to Boost Mobile in Q3. But before you start making plans to buy an iPhone from Boost, you could use a history lesson. That @evleaks tweet could just as easily have come from last year.

The first rumblings of a Boost iPhone came last June when the site Techno Buffalo cited a “trusted source” who said that Boost would get the iPhone in September — Q3, for those not familiar with the quarterly calendar breakdown. It turns out we should have listened to 9to5Mac’s sources, who said that the rumor was “purely fiction.” Obviously we never got that Boost iPhone.

Of course, exactly a day after we heard those Boost rumors, we learned that Virgin Mobile, which like Boost is a subsidiary of Sprint, would carry the iPhone. So perhaps there was just a virtual game of telephone going on there, wherein Boost becomes Virgin, and Q3 becomes Q2.

This iPhone rumor is a bit more believable, because of a few factors. First, we know that Sprint has a contract with Apple and wants to get rid of devices. Perhaps Virgin represented an experiment of sorts, and perhaps that experiment was deemed a success. Moreover, there’s a good chance that Apple will announce its next-gen iPhone in Q3, meaning carriers like Sprint will have to start getting rid of older units. Using Boost to distribute iPhone 4, 4S, and 5 models will allow the main Sprint brand to focus on the 5S, or whatever new model Apple announces.

So yes, approach this rumor with extra caution, since we’ve heard it before. But it does seem believable. In fact, given the way things unfolded last year, perhaps we’ll see the iPhone at Boost before Q3.

But don’t get your hopes up.

This post originated at PrepaidReviews.com - The number one resource for Tracfone Prepaid information on the web!

T-Mobile and MetroPCS expect few changes following merger

Joe — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 19:49:59 +0000

After months of jumping through regulatory and shareholder loops, the T-Mobile/MetroPCS merger has gone through. They’ll make it official this Wednesday, May 1. Now that the journalists and analysts have had their field day, we get to the question at the heart of the matter: what does this mean to you, the customer of either MetroPCS or T-Mobile. The answer, in short, is that nothing will change immediately. While the two entities will fall under the same corporate umbrella, they will continue to operate as they have previously. The only small change might be expanded handset availability, but with T-Mobile’s limited LTE coverage that might not be a big consideration in the short run.

If you’re looking for the bigger picture, TmoNews.com has a piece covering the longview of the merger. The biggest change will come in 2015, when T-Mobile and MetroPCS could have LTE coverage in multiple major markets that trumps the speeds of Verizon and AT&T. But it’s a bit early to be talking about 2015 effects. In the moment, little will change.

Another non-change following the merger: GoSmart Mobile will remain in tact, writes FierceWireless’s Mike Dano. T-Mobile actually launched the offering after news broke of the proposed merger. In some ways it might seem to compete with MetroPCS’s offerings, but for the time being it will remain a brand under T-Mobile. Perhaps there will be some kind of blending with MetroPCS at some point, but for right now GoSmart will remain.

In other words, don’t expect worlds to change when this merger goes through on Wednesday. Both companies agreed to the merger because of the long-term implications, not because of some one-off ideas.

This post originated at PrepaidReviews.com - The number one resource for Tracfone Prepaid information on the web!

Ultra Mobile adds $19 plan

Joe — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 16:56:29 +0000

It appears that Republic Wireless isn’t the only carrier offering a $19 prepaid plan. Ultra Mobile, which we mentioned with other interesting MVNOs last year, has introduced its own $19 plan that provides unlimited global text messaging. It doesn’t have the benefit of Republic’s unlimited data, but then again it’s not aimed at that kind of user. It’s made for a heavy texter who doesn’t talk much — the plan provides for just 250 voice minutes. It also provide 50MB of data, which is plenty enough for basic mobile web usage. If you’re on a smartphone you can add 500MB of data for $10. Then again, more data-heavy users will probably prefer Ultra Mobile’s $29 or $59 plans, which cater more to the smartphone crowd. Ultra Mobile is an MVNO of the T-Mobile network. You can check out the plans at Ultra.me.

Via The Full Signal.

This post originated at PrepaidReviews.com - The number one resource for Tracfone Prepaid information on the web!