At 08 Jan 2008 17:53:26 -0600 clifto wrote:
> Joel Koltner wrote:
> > The pay-as-you-go phones tend to make significantly more money on a
"per
> > minute of usage" basis than "regular" (contract) phones, so the
marketing idea
> > there is that it doesn't take nearly as long for the manufacturer to re-
coop
> > the "discount" they gave you on the phone, so even if you lose or throw
away
> > or otherwise stop using the phone (and go get another one for $50)
there's a
> > decent chance they'll have already made some money off of you overall.
>
> That's hard for me to see, considering T-Mobile wants $30 for 300 minutes
> post-pay (use 'em or lose 'em in a month), vs. $100 for 1,000 minutes
> pre-pay (use 'em any time in a year).


But you cherry-picked the most expensive (per minute) rate plan for your
comparison, not to mention the $30/300 minute plan includes free weekends.
T-Mo offers 1000 minutes for $40- a more attractive plan for heavy users- a
700 min./month postpaid user, for example, pays $40/month instead of $70 on
prepaid.

Having said that, unlike most carriers who seem to offer prepaid as a "last
resort" for credit-challenged consumers, and at a price designed not to
cannibalize their bread-n-butter postpaid biz, T-Mo aggressively pursues
the pre-paid market, seeming to assume that anyone their prepaid offering
lures from pstpaid is likely a high enough volume user that it'll be worth
it. That seems to work for them, considering that their prepaid ARPU is
(relatively) high, and their total ARPU is also relatively high considering
their high percentage of prepaid customers compared to other carriers.