This article appeared 10 months ago, and it is appropriately titled. The idea is starting to catch on. I see numerous mainstream media reports daily talking about the advantages of prepaid. Now the industry rag, RCR Wireless News, is putting a bit more emphasis on it. The latest is a Dan Meyer column in which he chronicles the postpaid nature of America, and how prepaid could be seeing a big boost in the near future. He discusses how AT&T GoPhone and T-Mobile prepaid have grown significantly over the past few quarters (the news on T-Mobile adding more prepaid customers has been prevalent in the third and fourth quarters). He then mentions Verizon, which saw a slowing prepaid growth last year, but have introduced a new line of INpulse prepaid plans which could help them expand their customer base. As he says, the competition is just beginning to open up:
Smaller players like Tracfone, Virgin Mobile USA, Leap and MetroPCS have made the no-contract space ultra-competitive and to this point have been relatively free of fierce competition from nationwide operators. But with growth among the postpaid, contract crowd slowing, that is no longer the case.Boost Mobile has made it a tougher game, too. We could certainly see significant prepaid growth in the first quarter. That would normally be good news for these small operators, and it most likely still will be. But with the bigger players putting some emphasis on prepaid, it might not be as good as it would have been otherwise.]]>