Leap counters competitors in San Antonio

SAN DIEGO-Leap Wireless International Inc. has adjusted its price plans in the increasingly competitive San Antonio market-and the new price points just happen to meet or beat the prices of a recently launched local carrier offering similar unlimited regional and national calling plans.
Pocket Communications Inc. launched in San Antonio in July with plans that undercut Leap’s offerings by $3 per month. Pocket offers only two plans: a $27 local calling plan and a $37 local and domestic long distance plan with unlimited text and picture messaging.
Leap, in comparison, was offering similar services for $30 and $40, respectively. Those prices still stand in Leap’s five other Texas markets. However, in San Antonio, the carrier marked its offering down to $25 for basic regional calling and met Pocket’s $37 offering with a plan for all-you-can-eat messaging, local calling and domestic long distance.
Neither carrier requires a contract or credit check in order to activate service, and both are offering the first month of service free.
The San Antonio market “is very competitive across the board. All the carriers are represented here, and everybody has been very aggressive in building out their distribution and doing a lot of advertising,” said Cody Simpson, district director of the San Antonio market for Leap Wireless. The price changes were “in response to the overall competitive nature of the market.”
Simpson said that Leap is focusing on its customers’ ability to roam in other Leap markets in Texas with an extended calling area included in plans at $40 and up, as well as the option to roam nationally in other Leap markets for $50 per month. The extended local calling areas were expanded at about the same time as the price changes were made in the San Antonio market, Simpson said; the price changes went into effect in August.
Pocket announced this week that it has begun a soft launch of service to Laredo, Tex., and plans to expand into the Rio Grande Valley by next spring.