T-Mobile sees spike in prepaid subscribers

Yesterday, we saw that T-Mobile added over 800,000 customers in the third quarter. Today, we have a new revelation: nearly 300,000 of them were of the prepaid variety. No, that’s not a misprint or a typo. T-Mobile is reporting that 35 percent of their new customers in the third quarter signed up for prepaid. That’s up from four percent in the third quarter of 2006, and 20 percent in the second quarter of 2007. The reason given for the spike:

The wireless operator said that its July launch of FlexPay, which expanded pay-as-you-go options for prepaid customers as well as those on contracts, helped drive the growth of its prepaid service during the third quarter, particularly among Flexpay customers without contracts.

Thing is, there aren’t more pay-as-you-go options. There are more options on how to pay for your prepaid account. So did ease of payment really account for T-Mobile’s spike in prepaid? We suppose we’ll never know for sure. The company currently boasts 27.7 million subscribers, just over four million of which are preapaid. [RCR Wireless News]]]>