Rumor Mill: T-Mobile launching prepaid BlackBerry service

T-Mobile USA is going to introduce prepaid service for Research In Motion's BlackBerry phones, according to the website CrackBerry.com.

[1]The website cited a Best Buy advertisement for a T-Mobile BlackBerry Pearl II, priced at $299.99, with a new offer for the phone "with no contracts, no commitments." The ad's fine print says that the service and coverage is not available in all areas, but that it is available in New Jersey.

T-Mobile declined to comment on the speculation. If confirmed, it would be another piece of evidence that unlimited prepaid plans from carriers such as MetroPCS, Leap Wireless and Sprint Nextel's prepaid unit, Boost Mobile, are exerting pressure on Tier 1 carriers.

Indeed, according to the research firm IDC, of the 3.5 million retail net subscriber additions the top 10 U.S. wireless carriers had reported in the first quarter, 75 percent were prepaid subscribers. Prepaid subscribers make up 19.2 percent of total subscribers for the top 10 carriers, according to IDC.

For more:
- see this CrackBerry.com post [2]
- see this IDC release [3]

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[9]