Sprint Vs. Tracfone , prepaid giants in 2010. Who will win?

[fonezfonz]

Well, Tracfone just launched the new version Net10 unlimited and has TWO prepaid unlimited brands that are now comparable in features and price (the old Net10 unlimited was talk/text only for $80.)

At $50 for unlimited everything, N10 Unltd is Straight Talk's gsm fraternal sibling.

At the same time there is a lot of activity at Sprint. Both on its prepaid arm side and mvno side.

Boost iden came off 2009 as the strongest growing single prepaid wireless brand helping Sprint.

Sprint bought out Virgin Mobile.

Sprint is now beefing up Boost cdma with new phones and a new Blackberry phone and plan. No longer charging taxes and going to allow activations in all 50 states.

Liberty Wireless, one of Sprint's top Four mvnos has just launched an unprecendented combo attack of a unlimited everything plan for $50 with a free Motorola Q/smartphone and a new byod plan that NO OTHER Sprint mvno has , not even Boost cdma.

Sprint continues to either slash wholesale rates or give its mvnos more on their unlimited offerings.


Tracfone boasts superior overall coverage, easy access via Walmart/Target, nationwide advertising, prepaid being their ONLY specialty.

They suffer from NO byod capbilites. Limited 3G data/web, poor overall customer service .

Sprint's prepaids boasts a much larger selection of handsets, some mvnos have byod capabilities, Sprint has more mvnos then any other single big four carrier, prepaid is its strongest growth division, and they are desperate enough to really want to make it work.

They suffer from a lack of network coverage in cdma markets and not allowing more byod for its mvnos. Oh yeah, and the mere fact that they are still not fixing the real problem at Sprint, their ailing postpaid side.

Frankly, I think Tracfone will do very well but not beat Boost/VM. But they can hurt Sprint by forcing it to spend more resources in marketing to compete then it would have had to only six months ago when ST was still only in test market stage and Net10 unlimited was about $30 too high.

I say Tracfone will do good with the Joe Shmo market and Sprint will do better with the Hofo type market. I'm just wondering if Sprint will cannibalize its own postpaid users? That's what has me concerned about the unofficial byod "program" over at Boost cdma.

[25jive1]

I don't know where the unlimited prepaid market is going or who will win. I don't pay much attention to it.

I'm a PayGo person and have been for a long time. I like it because with proper care I get to use every minute I pay for and at my usage provide myself with good service for a lot less than any unlimited plan. I like cheap phones with decent voice quality, that pick up a signal well and are easy to navigate through the menu.....nothing over $20.

I have a really good MacBook for data.

[knowbody09]

Looks to me like if a paygo brand like Net10 is pushing its little known Unlimited version (it first came out in its original form in mid 2008), then it looks like paygo will not not see that big an activity as heavy/unlimited plans will.

But I do hope that the unlimited plans dropping prices/ adding features trickles down to the paygo market. Net10 hasn't dropped their prices in 7 years for their regular plans. And practically nobody made any major changes in paygo rates since the unlimited war started.

Virgin Mobile still charges 20 cents a minute. Verizon/Att are both at 25 cents.
Tracfone/Tmobile's smallest card comes out to 33 cents a minute.
Texts went UP in price over a year ago industry wide and still hasn't come down.

The only prepaid carrier that has been launched new that is paygo I can think of is Verizon reseller Mingo Wireless. Everyone else is unlimited this or unlimited that.

There's some hope. Page Plus lowered its basic rate though it is now known more for its unlimited talk/text then the original paygo plans that got it started.

VM may be lowering per minute rates. Maybe. There is talk of a new round down system per minute .

The year is still young. I'm sure we'll see a lot of new things, both paygo and unlimited.

[grandhustle413]

fonezfonz, you couldn't of said it better. sprint is going to DOMINATE the prepaid market. boost iden has already added about 4 million to the network with the older $50 unlimited plan, which is good in metro cities, along with rural areas where nextel and verizon are the land kings. the boost cdma will draw a lot of attention, especially with full qwerty phones and blackberries. once they get the advertising going, it'll be a wrap. liberty will be popular amongst us, but it wont go mainstream until they get a couple of reputable dealers going around. VM will be good for payg, and the minute packs, which are some of the best deals in prepaid, IMO.

[25jive1]

And practically nobody made any major changes in paygo rates since the unlimited war started.

Virgin Mobile still charges 20 cents a minute. Verizon/Att are both at 25 cents.
Tracfone/Tmobile's smallest card comes out to 33 cents a minute.
Texts went UP in price over a year ago industry wide and still hasn't come down.

VM may be lowering per minute rates. Maybe. There is talk of a new round down system per minute .

The most you can pay with Page Plus is 10 cents, the least is 6 cents.
Its easy to get an inexpensive Tracfone with double minutes for life making a $20 card yield minutes at 17 cents...even less with bonus codes. There are other options with Trac to get a 7 cent rate.

T-Mo is a little different deal. I check Craigs List daily for T-Mo PINs. Doing so I've managed to keep my overall rate with T-Mo at 8 cents.

Perhaps rounding down is coming but I doubt it. Rounding up is a ridiculously successful revenue enhancer for any company.

[Telekom]

Well, Tracfone just launched the new version Net10 unlimited and has TWO prepaid unlimited brands that are now comparable in features and price (the old Net10 unlimited was talk/text only for $80.)

At $50 for unlimited everything, N10 Unltd is Straight Talk's gsm fraternal sibling.

At the same time there is a lot of activity at Sprint. Both on its prepaid arm side and mvno side.

Boost iden came off 2009 as the strongest growing single prepaid wireless brand helping Sprint.

Sprint bought out Virgin Mobile.

Sprint is now beefing up Boost cdma with new phones and a new Blackberry phone and plan. No longer charging taxes and going to allow activations in all 50 states.

Liberty Wireless, one of Sprint's top Four mvnos has just launched an unprecendented combo attack of a unlimited everything plan for $50 with a free Motorola Q/smartphone and a new byod plan that NO OTHER Sprint mvno has , not even Boost cdma.

Sprint continues to either slash wholesale rates or give its mvnos more on their unlimited offerings.


Tracfone boasts superior overall coverage, easy access via Walmart/Target, nationwide advertising, prepaid being their ONLY specialty.

They suffer from NO byod capbilites. Limited 3G data/web, poor overall customer service .

Sprint's prepaids boasts a much larger selection of handsets, some mvnos have byod capabilities, Sprint has more mvnos then any other single big four carrier, prepaid is its strongest growth division, and they are desperate enough to really want to make it work.

They suffer from a lack of network coverage in cdma markets and not allowing more byod for its mvnos. Oh yeah, and the mere fact that they are still not fixing the real problem at Sprint, their ailing postpaid side.

Frankly, I think Tracfone will do very well but not beat Boost/VM. But they can hurt Sprint by forcing it to spend more resources in marketing to compete then it would have had to only six months ago when ST was still only in test market stage and Net10 unlimited was about $30 too high.

I say Tracfone will do good with the Joe Shmo market and Sprint will do better with the Hofo type market. I'm just wondering if Sprint will cannibalize its own postpaid users? That's what has me concerned about the unofficial byod "program" over at Boost cdma.

The only reason Sprint has so many MVNOs is they have a surfeit of spectrum that they can sell to the MVNOs.

Same reason why all the MVNOs on the GSM side use T's network.

[fonezfonz]

T-mobile a lot of mvnos? Tuyo and Simple. Two mvnos I can name. Know any others? On the gsm side it is mostly Att. And yeah, EVERYONE sells spectrum to Tracfone so 2 and a half or a quarter.

[IsleOfMan]

I was a long time ATT Post Paid customer until I switched my wife and I to Boost iDen back in June. It was a simple cost-cutting measure in preparation for triplets which arrived in August. It just happened to occur at the same time as millions of others were making similar moves due to other economic pressures. If the general economy rebounds in '10, the prepaid bubble MIGHT quickly burst... but if it's a slow recovery, it MIGHT push the majors to better serve their prepaid subsidiaries and MVNOs. In an economy at rock bottom, people will put up with sub-par service at the right price. As the economy slowly improves, so will expectations... in a slow recovery, people might not wholesale jump back to expensive post-paid plans, but they might bounce around amongst prepaid subs and MVNOs that service/coverage COULD improve to mitigate subscriber losses. A slow economic recovery may be the best chance we have for notable improvements in service and coverage amongst prepaid subs and MVNOs.

In the short term, I think Sprint/Boost/VM (however the brands shake out) and their MVNOs will dominate the first quarter or half of '10. What I'm hoping is that this will pressure Verizon to loosen up Data prices for their MVNOs to be able to compete. I'm not speculating, but REALLY hoping for an unlimited or at least 5gb data option from PagePlus... until then, I'll be experimenting with Liberty.

[zapjb]

I'm hoping with competition & VZW lowering prices to MVNO's. That by mid 2010 PPC UTnT price is reduced to $30 & TnT to $20.

[IsleOfMan]

I'm hoping with competition & VZW lowering prices to MVNO's. That by mid 2010 PPC UTnT price is reduced to $30 & TnT to $20.

I'd much rather see PP up the data allotment at the current price than drop the price with the same amount of data. Not sure which of us better represents the majority or which scenario is more likely to play out.

[Telekom]

T-mobile a lot of mvnos? Tuyo and Simple. Two mvnos I can name. Know any others? On the gsm side it is mostly Att. And yeah, EVERYONE sells spectrum to Tracfone so 2 and a half or a quarter.

AT&T and T-Mobile T is the stock symbol of AT&T not T-Mobile.

[knowbody09]

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-...atestheadlines

Sprint has Boost cdma/iden, Virgin Mobile and Assurance Wireless (Safelink clone). They were asking VM users if they could help name another brand of prepaid wireless, called "Rejoice Wireless", a Christian, wireless service with a direct line to God. J/K.

Sprint may be launching another service or even two in about four months around summertime. Last quarter results for Boost mobile and VM weren't as strong as the previous three quarters with competing prepaid carriers starting to catch up.

I predict that by this summer, Sprint's "new brand" wireless will be out. And I think their strategy will succeed at first then backfire as people get confused.
"I hate Boost , I'm going to "new brand" wireless!" Same end pockets.

Tmobile is gearing up more then ever. They have reportedly bought a stake in Simple Mobile (which accounts for their improved plan rates), are the underlying network for Net10 Unlimited new version and are the most affordable gsm network for unlimited everything.

But Tmobile, like Sprint is in trouble: http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic...PO_report_says

Hard to predict where the number three and four carriers are going to go in the next year. They both see prepaid as a way to survive.

And yeah, Metro will put a gun to Leap's head and merge with Cricket and destroy Cricket's more liberal policies as the Metro Gestapo take over.

Straight Talk is going to be mvno number one next quarter and probably was this quarter.

[shawnlg]

Just when I was getting bored with Boost and their $50 plan (everyone has one now), they pull out the 3G CDMA guns. The advances in prepaid are hot and heavy. I guess one good thing came out of the bad economy. It seems like, for the longest time, prepaid was pretty stagnant.

[georgepa]

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-...atestheadlines



Straight Talk is going to be mvno number one next quarter and probably was this quarter.

No way. They weren't this quarter and won't be next quarter, now that Boost CDMA is going full blast (with full Blackberry service and the very popular $120 Qwerty slider Samsung Incognito.) Between Boost CDMA and Boost iDEN they'll probably get close to 800k, 900k again. No way Straight Talk can match that, IMO. Maybe Q2 after the Boost CDMA novelty wears off a bit.

[knowbody09]

No way. They weren't this quarter and won't be next quarter, now that Boost CDMA is going full blast (with full Blackberry service and the very popular $120 Qwerty slider Samsung Incognito.) Between Boost CDMA and Boost iDEN they'll probably get close to 800k, 900k again. No way Straight Talk can match that, IMO. Maybe Q2 after the Boost CDMA novelty wears off a bit.

Maybe. But Virgin and Boost combined were under 450 k new adds last quarter (Q4). Boost's weakest showing in a year.Analysts predicted 625k. Way off. Wonder if a few went to check out ST maybe?


http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-...LETopHeadlines

And Boost cdma lost 70% of it's usership in one year (from one million down to 300,000).

They have to add 700,000 alone just to get even with the losses on Boost cdma side. And with the possible launch of at least one other maybe two more brands, Sprint is going to be tangled up in a confusion of multi brands.

They should have merged the remnants of Bmcdma with VM and relaunched it as a premium arm of VM like Helio postpaid was. With Helio dead, there is a gap in the VM lineup. Boost cdma isn't postpaid but its premium nature (Blackberry Plan) relative to Virgin is clear.

But whatever, the Boost brand recognition and identity consistency took a prority over technical unity/consistency. Oh well. Lot of Nextel Berry users are going to be going, "can I use my Blackberry 7520/7100i/iden Curve on the new Boost Blackberry plan?" No. No and uh No.

Sprint and Tracfone are gonna clash, no doubt. Tracfone has two unlimiteds and now Sprint is going into a more premium market.

I say both are going to get bloodied but Sprint more so because they can never do anything right even when they get it right.

They still are losing people. Less then before, but losing people is losing .people. 69,000 is a lot less then a million net losses. But a loss is a loss is a loss. http://newsreleases.sprint.com/phoen...975&highlight=

Tracfone on the other hand is doing great guns. So are Verizon and Att prepaid, the two networks that most of Trac's mvnos run on.
http://www.businessweek.com/technolo...126_523377.htm

Verizon's deal with Tracfone is cited as one of the reasons that Verizon did well last Q. That probably means mostly Straight Talk as well as the cdma side of Net10/Tracfone.

Boost cdma is still new. I think they will be strong but Straight Talk will definitely not just sit there and do nothing. Sprint and Trac are gonna fight. It's inevitable.

It's gonna be fun.