The Prepaid Press - May 15, 2008 - (Page 13)

PREPAID WIRELESS May 15 · 2008 - 13 Prepaid Wireless Roundup By Joe Pawlikowski Leap Wireless expands network While Cricket, a subsidiary of Leap Wireless, might have some of the most attractive calling plans in the industry, they face one enormous disadvantage: network coverage. They don’t cover the entire country like Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile. However, after they won some spectrum in an auction in 2006, expansion plans became imminent. Leap began making those expansion announcements in April. Leap is launching a series of third generation networks, dubbed advanced wireless services, or AWS. Their first market, announced on April 1 and launched on April 8, was in Oklahoma City. Along with a number of new handsets that operate on this spectrum, Leap also introduced a mobile broadband card. This works on the AWS network, and costs $35 per month with an accompanying voice plan. On May 1, Leap made an announcement that they would launch their AWS service in Las Vegas on May 13. But before that launch date, on May 6, the company planned to expand their coverage in Texas to include Beaumont, Brownsville, Corpus Christi, Laredo, and McAllen. These will be AWS markets, making them the second such launch for Leap. Cricket wireless, a carrier of flat-rate, unlimited prepaid plans, will continue to roll out these new AWS markets throughout 2008 and into 2009. Their unlimited plans have been touted as having more features than the big carriers for a lower monthly fee. T-Mobile introduces Pay Per Day and plans FlexPay upgrade T-Mobile is best known in the prepaid world for their traditional pay as you go service, as well as their Gold Rewards program. While this service receives accolades, it is one of the barest prepaid offerings from a major carrier. T-Mobile found a solution to that in April, introducing a pay per day option. Like the other major carriers -- Verizon, AT&T, and Boost (for Sprint) -- T-Mobile now gives the option of paying a one dollar daily access fee, only on days that the phone is used. This pays for unlimited nights, which start at 7 p.m., and unlimited calls to and from other T-Mobile customers. With the pay per day plan, anytime minutes, which include weekend daytime minutes, are 10 cents each. Rumors abounded in April that T-Mobile would be upgrading their other prepaid offering, FlexPay. This isn’t a very well known service. In essence, it allows customers to select from T-Mobile’s postpaid plans, but pay for it in advance of each month. This is an attractive option for those who cannot pass a credit check, or who don’t want to be burdened with a two-year contract. The rumors speculate that FlexPay 2.0 is coming in July. There are few details, other than murmurings of a more aggressive ad campaign to promote the service. MVNO, decided that its agreement with the parent company wasn’t good enough, and has been seeking out an alternative. May saw the demise of two more MVNOs, though one has emerged from the dead. Early in the month, Hispanic MVNO Movida filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. They had a number of outstanding debts that they could not pay, including $15.9 million to Sprint Nextel. However, they were bought by Maryland-based APC Wireless. Because the company’s assets were protected during the proceedings, they were able to keep the service running throughout the month. The APC purchase guarantees that it will stay running at least a little bit longer. APC is no stranger bones operating costs. Christensen believes that while the U.S. hasn’t embraced the MVNO business model yet, they soon will. And when that happens, according to him, Sonopia will return. “Creating two industry-leading companies will provide improved flexibility, more tailored capital structures, and increased management focus…” to the MVNO world. They also recently purchased Liberty Wireless. The other MVNO, Sonopia, closed its doors just a week after Movida. Sonopia didn’t have a traditional MVNO model of reselling minutes to users. Rather, they helped organizations create mini MVNOs of their own. The service didn’t attract many subscribers, though. A few days after the shutdown announcement, Sonopia’s founder, Juha Christensen, claimed that the company wasn’t dead. Rather, it was laying low -- as in, carrying no staff and bare April not a good month for MVNOs The well being of mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) in the U.S. has come into question over the past year and a half. Providers such as ESPN Mobile, Amp’d Mobile, Disney Mobile, and XE Mobile have closed their doors over this period. Helio, an MVNO of the Sprint network, has continued its trend of posting quarterly losses. In February, Qwest, another Sprint MetroPCS expands, introduces push to talk The spectrum auction in 2006 was also good to MetroPCS, Leap’s rival in the flat-rate, unlimited prepaid market. They picked up a number of AWS bands, which they also plan to launch over the course of the next two years. First up for them was Las Vegas, where they launched on March 31. There have been no further AWS announcements from Metro, though they did enter the Bakersfield (CA) and Jacksonville (FL) markets without the AWS spectrum. The biggest news this month from Metro, however, is their push to talk service. Nextel has been the dominant name for push to talk, as their iDEN network is ideal for the service. However, Metro’s push to talk has a new feature: the ability to initiate a push to talk session with any phone on any network. This even includes landlines. The session must start from a MetroPCS handset, but can be carried on with anyone else who has a phone of any kind. The only downside at this point is that push to talk is only available on one handset, the Kyocera K312. The software, which runs push to talk, ChatLINK, costs $5 per month. Joe Pawlikowski is a Senior Editor for Prepaid Reviews, an independent website that reviews prepaid cell phone providers and reports on the prepaid wireless industry. He can be reached at info@prepaidreviews.com 20 http://www.ibasis.com/services/callcardservices.htm http://www.ibasis.com/services/callcardservices.htm http://www.ibasis.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of The Prepaid Press - May 15, 2008

The Prepaid Press - May 15, 2008 Prepaid Attracts Press Attention First Data to Acquire InComm Contents The Retske Report: To Everything There Is A Season Regulatory Rundown: Rules, Bills and Probes Courtesy of the FCC 5 Minutes With Ray Horak, Telecom Author The Prepaid Press Expo Spotlight The Age of Prepaid Prepaid Wireless in Brief Prepaid Wireless Roundup American Wireless to Sell Virgin Mobile Openet Introduces Flexible Accounts Prepaid Reviews Launches Pay as You Go Podcast Motorola Reports Losses APC Wireless Buys Movida Virgin Mobile to Deliver Limbo Services The State of Prepaid Technology Start Your Engines! The Legal Line PhoenixSoft Adds Service Providers Blackstone to Distribute Viscom Calling Cards Spot Rates IVR Technologies Releases Talking SIP 3.4 Calling Cards in Brief Former IDT Employee Wins $10.5 Million Payments in Brief Hypercom SmartPayments Certified for Windows Pacific Resource Credit Union Selects TMG New Payment Software for QuickBooks POS Blood in the Water Prepaid 101: Give Me the Power 7-Eleven to Hold Innovation Event First Data Gives Ingenico I-Series Class A Support Coinstar Kicks Off Change Reuse Program Payment Application Data Security Standard Issued Forrester Predicts Online Sales to Climb Retail Focus in Brief Our Advertisers Contact Us

The Prepaid Press - May 15, 2008

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