Prepaid Cell Phone Service Ready for Prime Time

First impressions are lasting ones and the advent of Prepaid cell phone services a few years resulted in some negative impressions that the industry would like to leave behind. Recently, the best of the Prepaid providers have made dramatic and fundamental changes to their services that should go a long way to putting the once poor substitute on an even footing with more traditional, contract based wireless providers.

Foundations of a Reputation

We’ve all heard the conjecture: Prepaid cellular service if for people who can’t qualify for real wireless service. Like many generalizations, there’s some basis is truth. Opening a typical postpaid wireless account includes be subjected to a credit check. For any number of reasons, lots of folks can’t meet the standards required by the wireless companies whether it be a past credit problem or, very commonly, younger people who simply haven’t yet established a credit history. The result is that service is denied or is dependent on making a hefty security deposit of up to $400. This was, and remains, a reason that many opt for Prepaid service. Prepaid cell phone service has always been free of credit checks.

Per minute pricing of Prepaid cellular service has also been at issue. While true that service can be purchased in small increments, the real price per minute can be deceptively high. The stigma that goes with overpaying for phone service is very much akin to the paying astronomical credit card interest rates because of failing to qualify for better.

Finally, in an environment in which one’s identity is somehow linked to the sophistication of the mobile device in his pocket, Prepaid phones have generally been viewed as ground chuck in a filet mignon world.

Prepaid Gains Stature

The best of the Prepaid cell phone providers have made remarkable progress in overcoming the most important reasons for avoiding their services. The most notable change has been with the introduction of flat rate, everything included monthly pricing plans. Boost Mobile and Cricket have both debuted unlimited plans for $50 monthly that not only include not only unlimited local and domestic long distance but also restriction free text and multimedia messaging and wireless web access. That’s particularly remarkable at a time when Sprint’s heralded and amazingly similar Simply Everything plan costs $99.99 per month. Spring is the parent company of Boost Mobile.

Competing service providers like Virgin Mobile, Net10 and regional carriers MetroPCS and U.S. Cellular offer programs that differ from those leading carriers only in relatively minor pricing, feature and coverage details.

In addition to the unlimited plans, all of the leading Prepaid providers now offer a range of creative service plans each designed to satisfy the requirements of various segments of the cell phone markets. Some are monthly offerings with fewer options than the unlimited plans but at a lower price. Others offer flat rates on a daily basis but only charge on days that the service is actually used. That can be a big savings for users who don’t need their phones every day. There’s also a wide variety of pay-as-you-go plans that allow customers to very specifically customize their charges to individual needs, paying only for services such as voice calls, text messaging, email and other web access as they are used.