Twitter feed (hey! follow us!), but for a different purpose. The point of this MSNBC article is to discuss prepaid BlackBerrys and smartphones. They talk about T-Mobile’s FlexPay and how it creates a real prepaid option for these devices. Buried in the article, though, we get numbers that aren’t readily available: prepaid subscriber numbers for the major carriers. Yeah, sometimes we’ll see a figure for Boost Mobile when Sprint makes their report, but rare is it that we see anything on Verizon INpulse. So let’s take a look at where they stand. To start, we know that Virgin Mobile carries about 5,000 subscribers. Turns out, T-Mobile To Go has just about the same number. That’s a good chunk of their now-30 million subscribers. Boost is a little down, boasting 4 million subscribers. INpulse, as expected, lags behind the pack with 3 million. Sorry, Verizon, but that’s what you get for a poor selection of prepaid plans. The merger with Alltel, though, should bring them some more on the prepaid end. Unsurprisingly, AT&T declined to divulge the number of people subscribed to Go Phone. The coolest number in the article, though, is that 17 percent of cellular subscribers are prepaid. That number figures to grow over the next year or so, as more families cut out their contract plans and start only paying for the minutes they use, while also cutting back overall on phone bills.]]>
Posted in Prepaid Services