Page Plus Makes Big Improvements

Page Plus Cellular has been one our favorite MVNO's but suffered from poor customer service.  Recently we were updating our Prepaid Pages and gave Page Plus a whole new look.  We were pleasantly surprised.

The turning point was their new Talk 'n Text 1200 plan.  Now, for only $29.95 you get 1200 minutes of Talk, 3000 Texts and 500 Mb of Data.  This is very generous, but the advantages don't stop there.  There are so many improvements, we only have room for a list:

• The $29.95 Talk 'n Text 1200 Plan includes more features than most users will ever need.
• Page Plus will activate almost any CDMA phone, including a Verizon Wireless iPhone.
• Customer Service has improved greatly often with agents answering within a few minutes.
• Auto-Refill recharges your account on the same date each month, not every 30 days like some prepaids.  If nothing else, this make accounting easier.
• Page Plus phones will roam off the Home network which is normally Verizon Wireless.  Other MVNO's, like Straight Talk, do not allow their CDMA phones to roam at all.  Page Plus charges a modest roaming fee, and you need to have some cash in your account, but your phone will work should you travel away from your Home network.
• Refills are widely available at retail or Online at a Discount.

There are additional features that are consumer-friendly and the company has agreed to be purchased by America Movil, the parent of TracFone.  So far Amerca Movil has kept each of the prepaid companies they have acquired intact, so we expect Page Plus to remain a highly recommended prepaid alternative. We have raised our Prepaid Rating of Page Plus from 2 Stars to 3, and we might need to expand the scale to show how dramatic their advantages are.

AT&T Catches the Cricket

We knew this domino would fall soon, we just weren't sure where.  Now that AT&T has agreed to buy Leap Wireless the parent of Cricket Wireless, we now know we'll have 4 big wireless carriers and now we know how they will be composed.  It's always sad to see another carrier disappear, but this is where we're headed.  We're just lucky that it looks like we'll have a Big 4 instead of a Big 2.

The Cricket name will live on, and just like MetroPCS, it will remain a brand using a different  network with much better capabilities and much better coverage.  This may also be an attempt by AT&T to face the future of no contracts and prepaid plans.  If Cricket's customers grow faster than AT&T, the money still goes into the same pot.  We also get a bit more broadband capacity among the Big survivors.

We'll watch the Cricket evolution, but it should mirror that of MetroPCS: switching phones from CDMA to GSM and broadening the names to be better nationwide competitors.

We had hopes that Cricket and MetroPCS would wind up together to make a passable 5th competitor, but, alas, that dream was not meant to be.  Now what becomes of the new number 5 through 10 network? Counting them down is what we do.

The Land Line Dinosaur

In our last posting we noted the availability of equipment directly from wireless carriers that replace your wireline with a wireless box.  Recently, Verizon, the landline operator, decided they will not replace the damaged copper wire lines in parts of New York and New Jersey that were damaged by (hurricane) Sandy.  Instead, they will use Verizon Wireless Voice Link.  Their studies showed 80 to 90% of phone traffic in those areas were already exclusively wireless.  In a guest column from Stop the Cap, Tom Maguire, Verizon’s Senior Vice President of Network Operations Support stated,

"In places like Fire Island, New York and some communities along the Jersey Shore, such as Mantoloking and Seaside Heights, Verizon evaluated the extent of the damage to its facilities – which in many cases were literally washed away by Super Storm Sandy – and conducted extensive research before deciding the best course of action to take in terms of restoration.

Fire Island is a popular beach community with only a few hundred year-round residents, but the population swells each summer. Verizon’s equipment on the eastern side of the island was not too heavily impacted, so repairs were made and services restored. On the western side of the Island, however, a large percentage of Verizon’s copper facilities were damaged beyond repair.

We studied the voice traffic on and off the island and where it was originating from on both Verizon’s wireline and wireless networks.  The company discovered that 80 percent of the voice traffic was already wireless.  If other wireless providers were factored in, it is likely that the percentage is closer to 90 percent.  This made it clear that people had already made the decision as to what technology works best. They had abandoned copper long before Sandy."

This is similar to incidents in the West where phone poles and wires were damaged by floods and wildfires and were replaced by RF microwave links.  At the time, customers and lawmakers feared losing the reliability of copper wire but after years of usage with these wireless connections, those fears have been largely unfounded.

It looks like when our copper networks begin to deteriorate, wireless may be the only replacement, especially when many of us have already substituted that pair of wires with cable from the cable company.  While it's scary that in some places the same company owns all 3 connections, it looks like the future is indeed wireless.

Same Home Phones - Minus Ma Bell

We noted the move of millions of households to all-wireless phones when we created The Unwired Home web site several years ago.  It was shortly thereafter that we moved Mom into assisted living and equipped her with a nice, simple wireless phone.  She said she appreciated the snazzy features that came with it, but she never overcame the idea that she thought she missed a bunch of calls from family when she was actually just looking at the old calls list.

My sister decided the technical questions were dominating the conversations, so she broke down and paid AT&T for a good old fashioned land line with Mom's old favorite desk phone with the oversize push buttons.  Mom didn't miss any of the cellular features and the topics returned to family and dinner and friends...and not the phone.

Then I discovered the joy of the Wireless Home Phone. It's a box offered by 3 of the top 4 carriers and some of the major Prepaids.  Mom still gets to use her Big Button phone, but the cord now goes to a box with an antenna, hidden elsewhere in the room.  Mom is none the wiser and all her calls are toll-free. She even figured out Call Waiting, and how to ignore it if she wants, too.

These new boxes are super easy to set up and save a lot of bucks if you are switching from a landline, plus you get all the features available with a normal cell phone.  This is big step in converting older family members to all-wireless.  They take it personally if they have to give up those kitchen and cordless phones they've invested in over the years.  And the learning curve is about zero unless they want to play with all those new, included features. Monthly fees range from $10 to $20 per month and the wireless "box" can be free with a contract or purchased without a contract for less than $100.  We also found a family who owns a vacation home that was remodeled and found the old phone wiring was dead (cut by careless contractor or sloppy homeowner).  Their new wireless box hidden in the closet brought all the wiring in the condo back to life...and for a lot less money.

We have a page just for these Wireless Home Phone Systems and now that Straight Talk and NET10 offer their own non-contract version of the device, we now have choices in what we think is a useful market.  I don't think I'll be caught walking around the house without my regular cell phone in my pocket, but Mom & Dad just might think it's the 'cat's pajamas'.

Cellular vs. Wireless

Over the years we have been listening to wireless users, and wondered what words you relate to most in relation to these activities: Wireless, Cellular, Mobile or something else?  In most foreign countries users call their wireless phones a "Mobile".,,not 'mobile phone', just 'Mobile'.  Since we first named ourselves Mountain Wireless, we thought US customers preferred the term 'Wireless'. As a result, we tried to eventually switch any of our web site names from 'Cellular' to 'Wireless', in the hopes of being more relevant to our readers.

Among the largest carriers, Wireless was chosen by Verizon, Cricket, Clear, Alltel and C Spire. Cellular is still preferred by US Cellular. PCS was used formerly by Sprint and still by MetroPCS. Mobile is being used by T-Mobile, Boost, Virgin, and in a form, AT&T Mobility.  It looks like Cellular is now the least popular among companies that have a lot at risk.  Remember Cellular One or Cellular South?

Our view is that Cellular (and Mobile) refers to the type of service used by people using carriers that provide handsets meant to be used in motion, in and away from home.  Wireless infers something more generic that includes portable communications, wi-fi (which is "wireless fidelity"), and data transfer using non-wired devices. We call this thing in our hand a cell phone, not a mobile or even a wireless phone, but we don't perceive a difference between getting our service from T-Mobile or Verizon Wireless.

Most important to us as a web-based service, changing from one name to another has turned out to be a bad idea.  As an example, the web site you are reading right now lost more than half of its visitors when we changed from Cellular Noise to Wireless Noise. Should we change it back...or go mobile?  Old habits die hard, don't they?

Sprint Coverage Changes

I tripped over a conversation among Sprint users across America's heartland and found that Sprint's Rural Alliance seemed to be falling apart.  The most detailed report we found was from an Oklahoma newspaper article that reported Sprint was changing its operating capabilities because so many of their customers were using expensive roaming data.

A few years ago we reported a similar situation across Wyoming and Montana where Sprint lost Alltel coverage areas as "native" Sprint service.  That meant Sprint customers were no longer allowed to use that coverage as their "home" network, and eventually, that CDMA coverage went away.  We were taken to task when we showed Sprint as missing that local coverage when a few users were disturbed to find it was no longer included in their regular bucket of minutes or data.

Now a similar change is occurring in rural Oklahoma and Kansas where once was "home' coverage is now roaming.  The good news is that service is still available although download speeds may be reduced and roaming charges (or penalties) may increase.  This affects a very small portion of Sprint customers, but if that's you, it could be a big deal.  It also shows more cracks in the armor of Sprint's on-network-only Unlimited plans that a few Sprint customers depend on.

"New" Sprint coverage in the Chicago to St. Louis area does not make up for these losses. Those territories gained from US Cellular only make the Sprint network a bit more robust in those areas.  The real issue here for users like us is that we still depend on a certain amount of roaming when we stray away from home, and it may cost more.

The New Direction of Prepaid

We fully expected prepaid wireless to become mainstream instead of the domain of the credit-challenged.  Some carriers are already 'prepaid-only' and recent economic struggles brought a large number of users to the prepaid arena mostly due to the lower price.  Now prepaid has taken a turn which has sparked some serious changes.

A few years ago we saw prepaid wireless customers paying for their service 'by the minute' instead of by the month.  We responded with the web sites, "WirelessBytheMinute.com" and "CellularBytheMinute.com".  Today customers aren't buying prepaid wireless as much by the minute, but more in blocks of unlimited minutes or in bites of megabytes.  Instead of paying as we go, we're still paying by the month, just without contracts.

The larger carriers have stepped up with their own improved prepaid offers or whole new prepaid programs.  AT&T has expanded beyond their GoPhone to their newest "Aio Wireless" (AIO = "All In One", pronounced "A-O)"), which sells the same thing as GoPhone with a different price structure, more like the unlimited plans started by T-Mobile and Straight Talk.  Verizon Wireless has improved their prepaid offers but has chosen not to branch off with a different name.  T-Mobile has introduced "GoSmart" as their prepaid specialty but they have also introduced a level of confusion by dropping the contract requirements for their regular cellular service as well as taking on, and expanding, another prepaid brand, MetroPCS.  T-Mobile also still has their old Prepaid brand.

Sprint now has their own prepaid brand as well as Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile prepaid services.  The other top prepaid supplier is American Movil who is making subtle changes to their Prepaid products.  For the most part they are separating which carriers will offer "Unlimited" and which ones will offer "Value."  We're also finding their Net10 and StraightTalk services are depending more on T-Mobile's network than AT&T.  For some reason, Cricket has taken a low profile. They may be the next to evolve...or go extinct.

We have also responded by shifting all of our "ByTheMinute" web sites over to "MountainPrepaid.com" to reflect the Prepaid nature of this evolution instead of pay-as-you-go.  We still offer our exclusive Discount Prepaid Refills.  There are still opportunities for the light user and we can help you find them.

MetroPCS Evolves

MetroPCS and T-Mobile have merged.  That's not news.  What happens next is going to be important.  T-Mobile becomes a much stronger carrier after gaining significant spectrum as a gift from the failed AT&T acquisition, and spectrum brought to the table with the MetroPCS merger.  Not only does T-Mobile get more spectrum, they get it in the largest markets and they get it contiguous to their existing spectrum.  This a powerful combination.  T-Mobile has become a contender, at least technically.

MetroPCS is now supposed to become a nationally-available prepaid service which will be operating on those new T-Mobile frequencies.  MetroPCS will continue to use their old CDMA network for the next couple of years which depends heavily on roaming partners to achieve nationwide coverage.  But now who needs MetroPCS?  Analysts suggest it might focus on the low end of the market, potentially the "credit-challenged."  But so does T-Mobile's own Prepaid and fledgling GoSmart Mobile.

Like Sprint's purchase of Nextel, the MetroPCS name may disappear.  Remember, most of the country has never heard of MetroPCS.  Unlike Nextel, MetroPCS comes with a hefty dowry of spectrum, so the name may not hold much value.  Are either "Metro" or "PCS" even relevant terms these days?  We will maintain it as a separate brand among our wireless network reports and coverage maps, but if MetroPCS becomes no more than a mirror image of T-Mobile Prepaid it may end up on our Wireless Archives page or among Alternative Networks.  With so much spectrum to work with we hope they find their niche.