My wife and I both have the old $30 SERO plan with unlimited text, pictures, data and 500 minutes of voice at 7pm.

So you might think we cost Sprint... however:
I average 146 minutes of voice per month total.
I use about 20Mb of data per month.
I never use text or picture messaging.

My wife almost never uses her phone at all. I'm happy to pay to keep it active so she has it for emergencies. There are many months where her usage is literally 0 minutes.

So I pay Sprint $60 for two lines of service which is a good deal, but my usage is so minimal I'd be shocked if Sprint doesn't make money.

The only catch for me is that I do use a PDA phone mostly for email.

BTW: In my area Verizon has better coverage, but cannot deliver the low-cost deal.

Modern Sprint plans aren't cheap enough to win me over. If I have to pay $60 or more dollars per month per line for similar services, I'll simply change carriers (although I'm not angry at Sprint for not giving the store away-- it's just a simple cost/value proposition as related to coverage in my area).

Anyway, I'm pleased they let the old SERO folks buy a touch pro 2 (arguably modern PDA phone), but disappointed no android etc. In short, the grandfathered folks who want a new phone in most cases will require a new plan. I'm not sure these folks will stay with Sprint. In my case, the answer will be no. If Sprint permitted me to use handset of my choice with my plan I would stay.

By the way, I realize I am probably in the real minority in terms of my minimal usage of my old SERO plans, which is why these plans are being deprecated. I'm sure Sprint just does the same cost/value analysis on their end too.

-Dan

I know they are probably losing money on me - sorry Sprint!

I am on the internet all the time with my old Mogul and I love it.

yes but is it "funny money" or real money... if you use the SERO features so much that it cause Sprint to incur actual, real costs to upgrade the network, backhaul for data, or causes Sprint to lose customers due to congestion, etc, then yes, you are causing Sprint to lose *real* money...

But if the services you use are well within the fixed costs of the network and existing network capacity, and it really doesn't affect any other customers, then it is only "funny money" in the sense of calculating costs based on assume what you *would* have paid, had you been on a ED plan (for example), but hugely assumes that you would actually be willing to pay for ED...

In most cases, SERO costs only funny money and the fact that SERO customers pay *real* money for SERO, even if it is less than ED customers, does not mean that SERO is causing Sprint to lose *real* money... in fact the opposite... SERO customers are still paying customers... which is a lot better than fewer customers or no customers, given the fixed cost nature of wireless...

I have a $50 SERO plan.

My contract just expired.

Sprint sent me an email offering me $50. to re-up for another 2-years.

I don't think they'd do that if they wanted me off the SERO plan.

Looks like you should get a prepaid for your wife.

Yeah, the prepaid for the wife comment is appreciated. Time was when prepaid meant dialing special string of digits when roaming, or that it was not possible on some of them to auto-replenish which meant you had to track and remember to keep the line alive.

I think there are several options now that permit automatic re-fill to keep the thing active, and permit roaming at a higher rate, but don't require the long string of digits to be dialed when roaming.

So yeah, time to look into that again.

-Dan

I don't think SERO costs Sprint money. Heck employees get a $15 a month plan. I doubt I am jamming up their towers or causing a backlog in traffic. So I am using tower space that would otherwise be unused. If SERO was stopped I would be on a prepaid plan. I don't see myself paying $100 or more a month for 2 cell phones.

Sprint gets $68+ (2 sero accounts) from me each month. This is $68 more than they would be getting if there was no SERO so my answer is no, i don't think Sprint is losing money on sero accounts.

Considering Boost Mobile CDMA is $50 a month for unlimited everything,I highly doubt it.