Boost Mobile pulling attention from competitors

Boost Mobile has done well since introducing their $50 unlimited plan. They’ve added over 1.5 million net subscribers, and could be in line for another good quarterly announcement. The $50 plan has attracted a lot of attention, often at the expense of competitors. Compete, the web-analytic company, notes that while non-customer traffic at prepaid wireless sites is up 12 percent over last year, Boost’s traffic is up 185 percent. That increase is mostly coming from AT&T and T-Mobile. They’re down 18 and 12 percent in year over year traffic, which is an even starker decrease because of the general increase in non-customer prepaid traffic. Those numbers could change, though, as AT&T is now offering a $60 unlimited plan, which could entice customers with a superior network. T-Mobile has also introduced new FlexPay plans, though Compete might not count that traffic because it’s not part of the prepaid portion of T-Mobile’s site. Compete also notes that prepaid companies would do well to focus on the quality of phones they offer. From company rep Danielle Nohe:

“They need to offer more advanced, feature-rich phones at reasonable prices to ensure that their customers can take advantage of these new plans.”

The problem, of course, is finding a way to offer good phones for cheap. If it could be done, someone would have done it already.]]>