Virgin Mobile USA Marks Return Of $20, Contract-Free WWAN Plan

by Ray Willington
from  http://hothardware.com/

  It's back! No, not the McRib, Virgin Mobile USA's $20 no-contract broadband plan! The company has just announced a new expansion to their Broadband2Go offerings, with the triumphant return of the $20 plan leading the charge. This joins the current $10 and $50 plans, and provides 500MB with one month expiration for $20, offering another option for flexible internet access especially for the occasional user or traveler. Virgin Mobile’s no contract Broadband2Go plans feature 3G speeds and start at just $10 for 10 days/100MB of access. For heavy users the $50 plan offers unlimited data access with 3G speeds up to 2.5GB each month.

For clarity, all of these devices operate on Sprint's network, so you'll need to double-check Sprint coverage near you before buying in. You'll also get a number of device options, all spelled out below. In a world of tie-me-downs, hearing this news feels really refreshing.

Virgin Mobile USA Bolsters Broadband2Go Portfolio with Addition of $20 Monthly No Contract Mobile Plan

WARREN, N.J. – May 19, 2011 – Virgin Mobile USA continues to enhance its affordable, No Contract offerings for mobile broadband with the addition of a $20 plan to its Broadband2Go portfolio. Now available online and at participating retailers, the new plan, an addition to the current $10 and $50 plans, provides 500MB of data with a one-month expiration, offering another option for flexible Internet access, especially for the occasional user or traveler.

“From business travelers to virtual workers to students, consumers use Broadband2Go in different ways,” said Sean Yelle, product manager, Virgin Mobile USA. “We found there are a substantial number of customers who want a monthly plan, but don’t need unlimited data. The addition of our new $20/500MB plan, paired with no annual contracts, provides customers an affordable option for broadband access, allowing them to pay only for the service they need, when they need it.”

Virgin Mobile’s No Contract Broadband2Go plans feature 3G speeds and start at just $10 for 10 days/100MB of access. For heavy users the $50 plan offers unlimited data access with 3G speeds up to 2.5GB each month. Additionally, Walmart customers will still be offered the $20 plan for 1GB of monthly access.

Virgin Mobile offers three different mobile broadband devices, operating on the Sprint Nationwide Network, as part of the Broadband2Go device portfolio:

    * The Ovation™ MC760 USB device, developed in conjunction with Novatel® Wireless (Nasdaq: NVTL), connects to a single personal computer or laptop and is available at retail for $79.99
    * The MiFi® 2200, an Intelligent Mobile Hotspot developed in conjunction with Novatel Wireless, is priced at $149.99 and allows up to five users at a time to connect using a variety of Wi-Fi enabled devices; and,
    * The ZTE PEELTM 3200, a first-of-its-kind device that connects to your iPod Touch® (second and third generations) for access to the Internet, email, music and more –for $99.99. The exclusive broadband plan for the PEEL 3200 offers users 500MB of data for $20/month.

Verizon Kisses Unlimited Data Goodbye

From: http://www.vision2mobile.com/
As promised, much to the chagrin of the bandwidth hog, Verizon Wireless confirmed Thursday that it will do away with its unlimited smartphone data plan sometime this summer. New, tiered plans will replace the $30-per-month unlimited option the carrier offers, according to CFO Fran Shammo, who was commenting on the topic at the Reuters Global Technology Summit.

This is certainly disappointing news to customers who gobble up lots of data, but Shammo said family data plans are likely on the way to make you feel better. Instead of every member of the family paying $30 per month for data, the company will roll out plans that allow families to pay one price that could save them money, much like how many family voice plans operate. Shammo called family data plans a “logical progression." No word yet on pricing.

AT&T did away with unlimited data last fall, so it comes as little surprise that Verizon Wireless would do the same. In fact, the carrier said as much a few months ago. AT&T offers three tiered plans for smartphone data: 200MB/month for $15; 2GB/month for $25; and 4GB for $45, which includes Wi-Fi tethering. We would expect the individual Verizon plans to be in the same ballpark.

AT&T Acquires T-Mobile, Rockets Up to More Than 130 Million U.S. Users

By David Murphy
From http://www.pcmag.com/

Breaking news in the mobile world: AT&T has acquired competitor T-Mobile, shrinking the "big four" carriers in the U.S. to a mere three. But it's a mighty three. The $39 billion purchase now summons forth the largest combined carrier in the U.S., one which already has its own nickname mere minutes after the transaction was announced: "AT&T-Mobile."

In total, AT&T and T-Mobile's combined operations will carry roughly 130 million users. Or, in layman's terms, a heckuva lot more people than now-second place Verizon and its users numbering in the mid-90 million.

But what does that mean for consumers? According to PCMag.com's Sascha Segan, expect less competition in the mobile market to hit harder on the ol' bank account. Not to mention a greater lack of device diversity as a result of AT&T and T-Mobile creating a combined (and more efficient) product line.

AT&T's paying $25 billion in cash for the acquisition, with the rest of the $39 billion purchase price coming from shares of AT&T common stock. As part of the deal, T-Mobile parent company Deutsche Telekom will gain an eight percent ownership interest in AT&T, and a Deutsche Telekom representative will join AT&T's board of directors.

The also move creates a monopoly on U.S. GSM carriers: There's just one now, AT&T/T-Mobile, to serve as the sole rival against the CDMA networks of competitors Sprint and Verizon. The mash-up between AT&T and T-Mobile—a combination of the worst and second-worst U.S. carriers, as ranked by this year's Consumer Reports customer survey–will mash together their wireless spectrums as well. This should give AT&T a stronger footing to deploy and expand its own 4G LTE network, which the company intends to launch mid-year.

"This transaction represents a major commitment to strengthen and expand critical infrastructure for our nation's future," said Randall Stephenson, AT&T chairman and CEO, in today's press release. "It will improve network quality, and it will bring advanced LTE capabilities to more than 294 million people."

According the release, issued today, AT&T needs as much spectrum as it can get its hands on to fuel its growing wireless network. The company claims that its mobile data traffic has grown more than 8,000 percent since 2006, and the company expects its 2015 traffic to be eight to 10 times that of today's values.

"Put another way, all of the mobile traffic volume AT&T carried during 2010 is estimated to be carried in just the first six to seven weeks of 2015," reads the statement.

Doubling off of that, the T-Mobile acquisition comes at a time when AT&T is seeing good subscriber growth—the company announced in January a gain of 2.8 million subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2010, making for a total count of 8.9 million subscribers gained within the full fiscal year.

T-Mobile, on the other hand, has been bleeding its business as of late. The company lost more than 300,000 contract subscribers in its fourth quarter, down a net of 23,000 customers in total. That's quite a drop compared to the same time period in 2009, when T-Mobile was actually in the black by around 371,000 total customers.

A March report by Bloomberg's Tara Lachapelle and Rita Nazareth indicated that T-Mobile parent company Deutsche Telekom has been shopping around T-Mobile for some time now—especially since the $28.5 billion the company invested in the American carrier has since shed its value by approximately three-fifths. Deutsche Telekom was allegedly in talks with Sprint to pawn off T-Mobile, but whatever deal was possibly in the works clearly didn't come to pass.

But that's not necessarily bad for T-Mobile: Instead of shacking up with the third-place carrier, it's now teamed up with the big dog in the park.

For more information on the transaction, consumers can check out the new AT&T/T-Mobile information site at www.mobilizeeverything.com.

Rating the Carriers: Customer Service Showdown

Phones, coverage, and apps don’t matter if you can’t keep the customer happy. Find out how the carriers stack up.

T-Mobile wins with in-store assistance that (despite a rush-hour wait of 45 minutes) answered all our questions and the best web support in the bunch, thanks to speedy helpful tech support and easy online email setup for BlackBerry phones.

Our experience with Sprint in-store was helpful too. Though in-store employees couldn't answer all our questions, they were organized and considerate each step of the way and we appreciated how organized each store was, with LCD screens representing our queue positions. Also, one store employee helped us before it was even our turn.

Verizon Wireless offered solid in-store support, but employees weren't as friendly as those in other stores. It has a robust online database with answers to many questions, including interactive phone guides, but does not offer online chat support. Verizon also offered quick and accurate phone support.

AT&T lands last in our tests. Our in-store experience left us with one question out of three unanswered and we were shocked that one representative couldn't help get our email up and running (though another rep at a different store was successful). Our trial of AT&T's web support turned up similar results when one online associate told us they don't support Slacker software, and one of our phone support calls lasted 45 minutes without resolving the last of our issues.

Overall our showdown shows that given the variance in knowledge from employee to employee, you may want to take some comments made by reps with a grain of salt, or, at least, make a habit of seeking out a second opinion. Still, T-Mobile takes the kitty with the best web and phone support of the big four. AT&T, on the other hand, might have some work to do in prepping for next year.

Americans pay 5 times more than the Dutch for wireless

A new OECD survey highlights the massive disparity in wireless service costs across countries. Americans pay significantly more than their counterparts in Sweden and the Netherlands for mobile broadband.

By Jon Stokes |

If you think that your mobile phone bill is out of control, that's apparently because it is. A new Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) survey has found that mobile users in the US, Canada, and Spain pay almost five times more for wireless service than their counterparts in the Netherlands, Finland, and Sweden, who pay the least.

More generally, the report nicely ties together a few trends in the telecom industry: texting services have become significant profit centers, and service providers have cut back on equipment spending during the downturn. The striking thing is that, by doing so, they've managed to actually grow profits despite the economic turmoil.

The portions of the report that are available to the public indicate that, across countries, prices ranged from $11 to $53 for a medium usage plan of 780 voice calls, 600 SMS messages, and eight multimedia (MMS) messages. That's a pretty wide range, and North American users are at the top end of it.

As for the reason behind the disparity between US rates and those abroad, the CTIA, a wireless industry trade group, has already released a rebuttal to the report that attributes the disparity to differences in calling patterns.

Since the average US calling profile is nearly three times greater than the OECD's "high usage" basket (and, in fact, the average US calling profile is nearly six times greater than the OECD's "average" usage basket), it is no surprise that most other sources show the price per-call (or price per-MOU) in the United States is the lowest among the OECD countries.

In other words, Americans use way more minutes than customers in other countries, so if you look at the actual per-minute cost, they're lower because the US is buying in bulk, so to speak.

In addition to calls, SMS "continues to be a particularly lucrative market for operators." This news won't come as a shock to governments in either the US or Europe, which have been looking into how wireless carriers price SMS messages for over a year now.

Both AT&T and Verizon recently testified before Congress about their text messaging charges, and the two companies' representatives denied that they colluded to double text messaging prices over the past five years. The reps indicated that their companies were merely responding to Sprint's decision to raise SMS prices, and they also pointed out that the doubling in message pricing only applies to plans that don't include a fixed number of messages for a fee.

The text messaging trend stands in sharp contrast to the cost of voice calls, which the OECD study says have declined by an average of 21 percent for low usage customers, 28 percent for medium usage, and 32 percent for high usage.

The combination of declining voice prices and rising SMS fees fits with the generational change in mobile usage patterns, as younger users prefer text-based forms of communication like SMS and IM. The study notes that many of the carriers are aiming their text messaging packages specifically at younger users.

The report also takes note of a phenomenon that was starkly evident in this latest round of quarterly earnings releases: bandwidth providers across the industry, from Comcast to AT&T, saw profits jump, while network infrastructure makers from Cisco to D-Link saw huge revenue declines.

Clearly, service providers are extracting more money from the use of existing equipment. It's good news for them, but equipment makers are getting whacked for the second time in a decade as infrastructure spending slows dramatically after a period of frenzied investment.

In any case, the report makes it clear that North American carriers have become extremely adept at keeping their income streams growing regardless of what's happening with the larger economy. There may be national differences in usage habits, but the data suggests that service providers would figure out a way to work around them.

Save Money on Your Cell Phone Bill and Credit Cards With BillShrink

Don’t know if you are getting the best deal with your current cell phone plan. Enter Billshrink, 100% free web service where you can instantly compare 100+ mobile plans and find the best plan for your cell phone. And it only takes about 3-4 minutes.

First you need to provide some information about your location and usage preferences/requirements (i.e. avgerage daily talk time, whether you need data plan, SMS usage, network coverage, average phone bill etc.). Then, BillShrink will list all available cell phone plans starting from the cheapest. Along with everything else it

also tells you how much you will be actually saving.

Features:

• Find the best mobile contract for your needs.
• Highly customizable: Considers factors such as which areas/networks you call often, daily talk time, data usage and so on.
• Enter your phone usage details manually or (Optionally) import them directly from the phone bill.
• Sort recommended results by monthly price, the amount it can save, overall rank, and signal strength.
• Map with a visual representation of each carrier’s coverage/signal strength.
• Set BillShrink to re-analyze your profile on a monthly basis and send you email alerts in case there are better deals.
• Note: The service is quite new so once in a while some small things may not works as expected.

Update: Credit Card Service just added

BillShrink, the startup that helps users cut costs on their phone bills, is expanding its automated advisor to an entirely new field: Credit Cards. The site’s recommendation engine will now include a database of over 200 major credit cards, helping users choose an ideal card after entering only a few basic criteria.

To begin using the system, users first decide if they’re interested in a card that will reward them for keeping their bills paid off, or one that will minimize the interest accrued on balances that are being paid off over time. Next, they’re asked to enter the amount of money the typically spend in a month, their current credit standing, and the places they spend the most money (for example, “groceries” or “airline tickets”).

Using this data BillShrink generates a listing of its highest matches, prominently displaying the overall monetary gains, along with a number of graphs that detail earning rates, fees, and limits. The site also includes an in-depth description of each card for further reference. Beyond basic numeric calculations, BillShrink also takes into account the previously entered spending preferences - for example, it will give preference to a card that accumulates “miles” quickly when someone is a frequent traveler.

BillShrink is headed by ex-Photobucket exec Peter Pham, and offers a similar comparison service for mobile phones which launched in beta last April. Using signal maps, plan rates, and usage habits, the site recommends what kind of service plan each user should be on, or if they should switch carriers entirely. While the service got off to a rocky start, it has made great strides and will be incorporating the revamped interface that launches today alongside the credit-card portion of the site.

Financial startup Mint also offers credit card recommendations, though these are not nearly as comprehensive as those seen on BillShrink.

Check out BillShrink @ www.billshrink.com