Hello! And welcome to our Friday column, Worst of the Week. There’s a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCRWireless.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!
And without further ado:
I don’t need to tell any of you, but dang, if that prepaid space is not getting more exciting by the day. I know carriers have been instigating pricing and marketing wars in the no-contract arena for years now, but I am guessing we are on the verge of an all out battle that I can only hope involves an octagon, a chair or two and some masks.
This week’s pile drivers started with Virgin Mobile USA enticing current T-Mobile USA customers with a $100 bill if they switched, which is pretty sweet. I really have dog in that fight, but waving cold, hard cash in front of people in order to get them to switch carriers just seems to be basic marketing 101. Why spend money on fancy ads trying to convince people just how good you are when you can just give them some money?
T-Mobile USA (sorta) responded by offering to cut $100 from the price of the now available Apple iPhone 5, plus offering to provide up to $120 in credit for customers bringing in their current iPhone 4 and 4S devices. Hey, Virgin Mobile USA offers both of those?!? I wonder if T-Mobile USA knew that?
These sort of tit-for-tat battles are common place in the wireless space, and I think we are all better for it. Sure, the mobile industry is a “mature” market worth billions of dollars each year providing a service that no one – that’s right, no one – can imagine being without. What better way to show that maturity level than to just start throwing money at consumers?
And all of this cash throwing is for a market segment that drives the bean counters the craziest. In my book that’s called a double bonus.
The hilarity of this is even more profound when you see how Verizon Wireless reacted (or didn’t react) to this latest prepaid buzz. The carrier best known for vacuuming up all the current postpaid customer growth and fattening its bottom line managed to juggle some of its prepaid plans just for the hell of it. Those new plans offer 500 anytime calling minutes with unlimited messaging and mobile Web access from a “basic” device, meaning something no one would actually like to actually use to send unlimited messaging or access unlimited Web services from. Well done.
Where will all this nonsense lead? Well, hopefully just to more nonsense. Because, nothing attracts the attention of consumers more than seemingly mature people acting immaturely. Even more so when they are wearing masks while throwing chairs at each other in the octagon. Let’s get it on!
OK, enough of that.
Thanks for checking out this week’s Worst of the Week column. And now for some extras:
–I know there has been a lot of talk about how cell phones have made our nation’s roads a real-life post-apocalyptic hellscape. What with the driving and texting/talking/Facebooking and things.
However, a new report from Erie Insurance paints an even more dire picture of just how dangerous the roads really are and why we will never be safe.
Citing research from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (you know, those cool people that take perfectly good cars and ram them into walls?) Erie Insurance found that while cell phones did indeed account for 12% of distracted driving-related accidents that resulted in a fatality, a dreamier 62% of such accidents were caused by people claiming to be “lost in thought.”
Think about that for a minute, though don’t think about it if you are piloting a two-ton metal box on wheels. I know politicians like to get on soap boxes decrying the need to keep people from using their mobile devices while driving, but who will have the nerve to scream that people also stop getting lost in thought. Or, at least if you do, please use a headset.
–Nice bit of suspense there Deutsche Telekom, waiting until literally the last minute to boost its offer to MetroPCS shareholders in order to gain their nod for its pending acquisition/merger/fusion with T-Mobile USA.
Note to DT, this is not some film looking to get an Oscar nod. Why all the unnecessary suspense? Everyone has known for weeks you were going to do this, so why bother leaving us all hanging? Not cool.
–And finally, Sprint Nextel excited at least one person this week with the rollout of a purple – oh, I’m sorry, amethyst purple – version of the soon-to-be dated Samsung Galaxy S III. Just thinking out loud here, but I hope they have at least one of these at a store somewhere in Minnesota.
I welcome your comments. Please send me an e-mail at dmeyer@rcrwireless.com.
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