Scott wrote:

> How do you figure them to be low-profit? MVNO customers come with no
> acquisition or retention costs,

How do you figure that? Of course there are acquisition costs. The
prepaid phones are sold at below cost, and there are still marketing and
advertising expenses.

I probably should have said "lower profit" not "low profit." Sure you
might have a few prepaid customers using massive amounts of air time,
and ending up providing more revenue than a post paid customer, but it's
not common.

> far lower billing costs and no credit or collections costs associated with them.

But the carriers have been driving down these costs with eBills and
electronic payments, either debit or credit. It also costs money to
market the airtime cards.

> Of course, your opinion is probably a little warped because your beloved
> Verizon hasn't picked up on that yet. Better to misrepresent the truth
> than admit they are missing a cash cow.

I don't love any company. I have no idea why Verizon has eschewed making
a serious effort in prepaid. Well actually I do have an idea. I'd say
that they're worried that a decent prepaid offering would cannibalize
into the more profitable postpaid sales, given that many customers
consider only Verizon when looking for wireless service (due to the much
higher ratings that Verizon receives for coverage and quality). In my
area (Northern California) it's often a choice between Verizon or "no
coverage." The cheapest carrier-prepaid is from T-Mobile, which has
terrible coverage in this area.