Is Prepaid Mobile The Way To Go?
I was over at my in-laws house this past weekend, and the discussion turned to mobile phones. My father-in-law told me that the T-Mobile prepaid plan I had set them up with several years ago ended up not only being a good fit for them–which I of course knew from past discussions–but a good fit for his mom as well.
To wit, she was paying at least $35 a month simply to maintain a cell phone with Verizon. For $155 (plus sales tax), they got her a brand new Nokia phone and 1000 minutes worth of calling that are good for a year. This was in November. So far, she’s only used about 300 of those 1000 minutes. Assuming similar usage patterns, those minutes will be gone in another 6 months or so.
9 months on Verizon: $315 plus whatever the phone cost. 9 Months on T-Mobile, $155, including the phone. Which one’s a better deal? Why are people agreeing to two year contracts again when they can likely get a better deal by going prepaid?
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Comment by spg
lots of people would save money with prepaid..i use prepaid myself. you can have even cheaper rates plus great customer service(i am talking answering the phone without putting you on hold; and being knowledgeable) if you go with the smaller MVNO’s. my two favorite are ‘page plus’ and ’stimobile.’ not a lot of people outside of the ethnic immigrant neighborhoods have heard of these companies since one of the ways they can offer such low rates is by not advertising in the mainstream media.
Comment by PhoneBoy
Advertising is expensive. One way to cut costs is to not advertise, or at least be more clever about how you do it.
I’m still waiting for a more compelling GSM offering for prepaid. How come none of the GSM MVNOs support data?
Comment by spg
t-mobile has never had enough spectrum to lease out to an MVNO. cingular actually did have prepaid data at one time. AT&T is well; it’s AT&T.
Comment by A.T.
or at least be more clever about how you do it
hmm, you just kicked in one weird idea - how to do advertisement into unusual way to do it…
Comment by A.T.
this is only for comment testing - tho I do NOT see captcha picture.
Comment by PhoneBoy
@spg I believe Tracfone on the GSM side is AT&T. AT&T does have some MVNOs, but they aren’t much better than AT&T’s plans. T-Mobile barely has the spectrum to serve it’s native customers, you’re right.
Comment by luca
I think it’s definitely right. You in the US are discovering this tooooo late… Try to sell a 2-years plan to an italian “normal person” (not business) for €35/month… they’re gonna kill you and I think you’d never sell one. BTW, I got that T-Mobile prepaid here in Palo Alto… just paud $129 plus the phone (well, something that seems a phone.. it’s Nokia at least!) and 1000 minutes and works great here.
Comment by spg
tracfone actually has agreement with all the major networks and has phones operating on CDMA, GSM, TDMA, and analog in different parts of the country. i do belive that you are correct that most of the new phones being sold by tracfone are GSM and work mostly on AT&T; but if things have not changed they also roam directly on alltel in areas served by them without going through AT&T(who also relies on alltel in very large parts of the country) in between as other MVNO’s do. interestingly for some americans the word ‘tracfone’ is synonymous with ‘prepaid’ they were in the games years before anyone else.
Comment by PhoneBoy
Tracfone is a huge MVNO, one I know Nokia does a lot of business with. They do GSM and CDMA now. They’re trying to get people off TDMA and Analog, since it’s shutting down in a month or so.
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