Major wireless carriers improving prepaid plans

MVNOs. They filled a niche that the nationwide carriers could not afford to focus on. Something happened last year, though. The big carriers started to take better care of their prepaid divisions. We’ve seen each of the Big Four improve their prepaid offerings. Combined with their nationwide coverage, this is helping them outshine the little guys.

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. ]]>