Editor's Note: Welcome to our weekly Reality Check column. We've gathered a group of visionaries and veterans in the mobile industry to give their insights into the marketplace.June is a special month in the wireless industry. For the past four years, it has usually...
Editor's Note: Welcome to our weekly Reality Check column. We've gathered a group of visionaries and veterans in the mobile industry to give their insights into the marketplace.“This time, it’s for real.” If I have heard that phrase once, I’ve heard it a thousand...
Latin American-based telecommunications provider America Movil S.A.B. de C.V. (AMX) said it added six million wireless customers during the first quarter of this year, ending the period with 231 million total customers across its numerous wireless operations.America Movil has wireless operations in Mexico (Telcel),...
While the mobile market is indeed international in scale, don’t think carriers ignore local issues. A perfect example is a prepaid offering Verizon Wireless (VZ) unveiled last week in the Southern California and select Florida markets that looks to compete against similar offerings from...
Almost half of all prepaid wireless customers in the United States are on recurring monthly service plans, according to a new survey from J.D. Power and Associates. The survey found that the pay-as-you-go option among prepaid providers continues to fall in popularity among customers.The...
Editor's Note: Welcome to our weekly Reality Check column. We've gathered a group of visionaries and veterans in the mobile industry to give their insights into the marketplace.Sprint Nextel Corp. reported earnings last week, and it looks like the four year winter of subscriber...
Zacks Investment Research late last week upgraded its long-term recommendation on Latin American mobile operator America Movil S.A.B. de C.V. (AMX) from “underperform” to “neutral” citing the “growing Brazilian economy and improving macro conditions in Mexico and Argentina.”America Movil operates in 18 countries and...
Verizon Wireless (VZ) made some recent price adjustments to its prepaid offerings that now allow some of those plans to undercut pricing on its postpaid services. The carrier has slashed the price of its prepaid daily unlimited calling plans to $2, effectively pricing a...
Regional, flat-rate cellular provider MetroPCS Communications Inc. (PCS) has joined the growing list of providers to offer traditional prepaid wireless service exclusively through mega-hyper-giant retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc., according to a report from Current Analysis Inc.The carrier has rolled out its “By the Minute”...
Editor's Note: Welcome to our weekly feature, Analyst Angle. We've collected a group of the industry's leading analysts to give their outlook on the hot topics in the wireless industry. This article is an excerpt from RCR Wireless News' July Special Edition, "Riding the...
Editor's Note: Welcome to our weekly feature, Analyst Angle. We've collected a group of the industry's leading analysts to give their outlook on the hot topics in the wireless industry. This article is an excerpt from RCR Wireless News' July Special Edition, "Riding the...
UPDATED: Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) is set to further its wireless ambitions next week with the launch of a branded mobile offering that will run on T-Mobile USA Inc.'s (DTEGY) nationwide network.The plan, dubbed Walmart Family Mobile, will offer unlimited voice calls and text...
Editor's Note: Welcome to our weekly Reality Check column. We've gathered a group of visionaries and veterans in the mobile industry to give their insights into the marketplace.Greetings from Kansas City, where the weather and political climate are both scorching hot. We had an...
Has all the competitive pressure in the prepaid space been coming from MetroPCS Communications Inc. (PCS)? A glance at second quarter results shows that while other carrier’s that have traditionally been reliant on attracting prepaid customers seemed to have suffered during the quarter, MetroPCS...
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) will soon add AT&T Mobility (T) as a network option for its Straight Talk prepaid wireless service, giving the nation's largest retailer a GSM option alongside its Verizon Wireless (VZ) CDMA network plan. The move is notable in...
Verizon Communications Inc. posted surprising fourth quarter results this week showing that the increasing focus on non-traditional wireless customers has hit even the most traditional of carriers.For the fourth quarter, Verizon Wireless said it added more than 2.2 million customers to its network during...
The one-time rock of the wireless industry appears set to crumble. And I think that crumbling can't come soon enough. That rock is postpaid, contract-encumbered rate plans. These were necessary evils when the industry was rife with hundreds of wireless operators, each trying to...
While there's much talk in official Washington about including stimulus funding and incentives for broadband deployment (and more recently about setting aside a portion of the package's $775 billion total for a national dual-use 700 MHz network and the troubled DTV transition), it appears...
Once considered the red-headed stepchild of wireless, prepaid services are finally gaining mainstream appeal helped by the need for carriers to target broader demographics and consumer desires for more ways to control their spending. Over the past several weeks a number of operators have...
Just like Ronald Reagan claimed with his trickle-down economic plan, wireless customers are beginning to see unlimited offerings filter down to cheaper price points and in some cases to offerings that do not require a cumbersome contract.Last week Tracfone Wireless Inc. subsidiary Net10 jumped...
Tracfone Wireless Inc. subsidiary Net10 has jumped into the increasingly popular unlimited-service-plan play with its new Net10 Unlimited Plan, which offers unlimited calling and texting for $80 per month. Per Tracfone's modus operandi, the unlimited offer does not require a contract or credit checks,...
Regional wireless operator MetroPCS Communications Inc. topped the rankings in the latest customer-satisfaction study of prepaid users from J.D. Power and Associates.The Dallas-based carrier performed particularly well in five out of seven categories, the market research firm said, including cost of service, account management,...
A couple years ago, starting your very own mobile virtual network operations company was a sizzling hot idea and everybody was trying to cash in. But now, two years and a slue of MVNO closings later, the idea has fizzled. With the shut downs...
We reported on the seizure of nearly 20,000 mobile phones deemed to be outright counterfeits by federal officials. In the suspected bogus category, there also were 2,000 headsets, 462 boxes of accessories and a wad of cash totaling $210,990. Many of the big names...
