The battle for the $50 per month customer

The big boys aren't going to worry about Metro and Leap and even Boost for some time because when you look at the whole picture, the much wider coverage area has quite a bit of value.

MetroPCS just came into Boston. Although the coverage runs from RI up into NH it is very limited. In other words, you don't have to drive very far before you are either roaming at 39 to 79 cents per minute or have no service at all.

Therefore, if you have a car, you are not likely to be impressed with their coverage.

However, Metro is a great alternative to the home phone.

If you live in Boston or other city with no wheels and rely on public transportation then Metro may be the best thing to come along in a long while.

For the rest of us, a phone that is unusable much of the time is of little value.

The other issue is that many people already have enough minutes with ATT or Verizon. If most of the people you talk to are on the same carrier then calls to them are free and unlimited already.

It appears to me that for a large number of people, the issue is more coverage and network quality because they have enough minutes.

Those people would not be interested in trading coverage for unlimited usage.

I do believe that T-mobile is wise in offering a retention plan. It's easier to keep customers than to get new ones.

In the future I would expect that Sprint will drop the price of the $80 unlimited voice plan on it's CDMA network down to $60 or $50.

T-mobile would probably match it.

VZ and ATT may have to drop their unlimited down by 20 or $25 a month to $75 or $80 but I don't think any lower.

ATT and Verizon both have a lot of 800 mHz and will start building out 700 mHz spectrum.

The low band spectrum fills in better. For the same power and antenna height, the coverage is better. Equipment for low band is less expensive than for high band. Loss in the antenna cables is less.

Therefore, ATT and VZ will always have an advantage over carriers who do not have low band spectrum.

For the same amount of money spent on the network, you get better coverage on low band.

Study the coverage maps of high band carriers versus low band and you'll see.

Notice the different between Sprint, which has been around since 96 and has had plenty of time to build out their network, and the incumbent cellular carriers in any given area.

The low band carriers fill in much better and have few gaps in coverage.

Therefore, there is little reason for VZ and ATT to match the other carriers on minutes until the other carriers match VZ and ATT on coverage.
An alternative would be for the big boys to offer zoned plans with limited coverage and unlimited usage.

Speaking as one Verizon's high-margin, postpaid customers - I'm looking for ways to save money and will certainly investigate the new unlimited plan offered by Metro PCs. I never considered a prepaid plan before, but if I can save as much as $90 per month then I'm ready to write my check at the start of the month.

Sue, great article. I wanted add, however, than many customers who have wireless plans with the big players in the market (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, US Cellular, T-Mobile) are using the website fixmycellbill.com (which is powered by a company called Validas, where I admittedly work) to lower their cell bills significantly, if not actually down to the $50 threshold. Here are some stats regarding what I'm talking about: It costs five bucks to implement our suggested changes to your plan but the average consumer currently saves around $450 annually through us. Additionally, we will analyze your bill for free without any commitment of purchase, just to let you know exactly how many dollars your carrier is ripping you off by. I could go on and on about how shifty these cell companies can be in their attempts to make you overpay. We stop them, and have currently put nearly $4.7 million back in the pockets of consumers. You can check out Validas’s fixmycellbill.com in the national news media, most recently on Good Morning America at www. abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=6887412&page=1.

Good luck to everyone trying to regain control over their cell bills.

Dylan

The problem with Virgin Mobile is that they do not support their dealers. We were a Helio dealer for some time and now we do primarly Boost Mobile. They provide us handsets when we need them and they don't "allocate" handsets like Virgin Mobile and this is why their are nearly no Helio dealers around any more. Boost is taking away all the dealers from Virgin Mobile as there is no incentive anymore to stay in the Virgin Mobile distribution with Boost out there courting us over. It's a great product and a great company to work for unlike Virgin - Helio.

hello

The problem with Boost is that they use the old Nextel IDEN network that gets very little attention as far a engineering and maintenance from Sprint (who owns it now). The coverage is alot more sparse than Metro & Cricket. MVNO's are a tease who can't really sell the network or quality better than the network they use to provide their service. Yes, all MVNO's lease one of the big players networks! Metro & Leap offer a higher quality network with unlimited coverage in over 300 cities and roaming is now only 19 cents per minute anywhere in the US. Sure, switch to Boost, but you will come back to one of the real carriers one day. If you want a great value and a quality network go to see Metro, Cricket, Revol, or Pocket. Also, bring your Sprint, Altel, Verizon or US Cell phone with you and they can flash it to work on thier network.

sprintnextel better wakeup and get their customer service reps to take care of their customers service complaints or they will be losing massive customers!! i recently bought some 8350i sprintnextel blackberry phones !!! what a huge waste and a piece of shitttttttttttttttt these phones are !! they echooooooooooo and have other major issues ith email and texting problems not to mention battery life problems !!! sprintnextel was aware of this problem but stillllllllllllll will sell this heap of junk!!!!! its a shame that this company would and still will sell these 8350i blackberrys!!!! then once the consumer n customers finds out just as soon as they open their brandnew phone up out of the box its on with the biggest nightmare youll ever have !!! i wish i would of googled this product 8350i sprintnextel and got informed over this matter before i got these phones!!! to all that have these phones, sprintnextel will tell u theres a update coming in january, ohhh february, ohhh not till march!! well each of these months have come and gone with nooooooooo update fix!!! i even called rim in novascotia and talked with sue there and had her on 3 way and got ahold of sprint for her to listen what theyre saying about these magical updates to fix these horrible issues with these 8350i phones and sue from rim told the sprintnextel who she was and then sprintnextel rep told said ohhhhhh let me transfer you guys and the transfer was just an enternal hold !!!!! sprintnextel when does the old mighty dollar become more important than a good safe and usable product????? ohhh just one note to finish on !!!! ive been in the hospital at the univerty of fla hospital for the last 8 months fighting cancer !!! if this company sprintnextel would put me tru this nightmare in my situation, what would they do to you or your loved ones ???????????? if anyone has any questions please feel free to contact me at 352 812 2514 or 352 857 0214 my name is chris gilbert from florida!!!! god bless you !!!!!

Metro Pcs is on the ball! I was a helio customer and could not afford the outrageous bill. i ended up buying the expesive phone of the time call the Strobe from metro. Metro offered good service and did not drop calls. i thought it was a joke compared to my helio phone. But i stayed with metro and i traveled with it, i took some of the money i saved using its 50 dollar unlimited used it when i traveled it came to be bearable. Now metro came out with the new touch phone. It surpasses helio. I fell like i made a very good choice. Now i have a awesome phone and a awesome service. i have turn by turn navigation with voice. I use to be embrased of the "hello hello hello unlimited your self" i used to turn it off. but now i don't mind. i look at movies on my phone. send/read company email, peep out my facebook on its full html not wap internet. One thing i like about metro pcs is that it always getting better. thats what i like to see i pay for something and it gets better and better. I'm sure in a few more years metro is going to change the way we look and pay at cell phones. Some things i don't like about boost, if some one chirps you they can say what ever they want. one of my friends has it and the stuff that comes out that phone is so bad. He could be in a meeting and one of his friends blurt out something vaguer puts him in a bad light. you cant turn off the churp. also the phones suck. i am a full texting person i like havening all the letters. my buddy has the highest price phone for boost and he is not happy with the small screen. now one thing is cool the nation wide calling, but i'm sure metro will be on that in few years. but truth be known i run a successfully business off of metro and it was not hard to get the name of my business on my cell phone number. most of my customers who call me think im on a land line phone. and surprised i can text and talk to them. Get with metro if you don't travel and you want know the difference. buy the way sue your a hot momma.