Back in May, Qwest, the former MVNO of the Sprint network, ditched the oft-ridiculed carrier and hitched on with Verizon. Except the agreement wasn’t of a true MVNO nature. Instead, Qwest would become a Verizon reseller. What this meant, in essence, was that Qwest customers wouldn’t be Qwest customers for much longer. The company is now starting to port interested subscribers to Verizon accounts. Yes, they’ll waive the early termination fee — how very generous of them. If you don’t want to switch, though, you’re stuck with Qwest until your contract is up, or they cease operations.

That can’t feel good for current subscribers. They’re without a place to turn. Qwest is a lame duck carrier. Imagine how you’d feel if you had to call customer service. If you’re not switching, what incentive do they have to help you? Of course, I know that this doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll be stuck without a flotation device. But I do wonder if Qwest will continue to serve customers well.

If you’re a Qwest subscriber, you can check out their FAQ to see what this means for you.

This post was taken from Prepaidreviews.com - a top source of information on prepaid cell phones and prepaid providers like Verizon INPulse, Cricket Wireless and more.

We had first seen this phone back at CTIA — I wrote a blurb about it for The Prepaid Press. It’s the C79 from ZTE, and it gives MetroPCS subscribers a a lower cost alternative to most of its handset selection. It’s got music playing capabilities, supported by 69MB of internal memory and a microSD slot. The camera clocks in a 1.3 megapixels, and yes, it features Bluetooth. You can nab one for $170, contract-free.

[via Phone Scoop]

This post was taken from Prepaidreviews.com - a top source of information on prepaid cell phones and prepaid providers like Verizon INPulse, Cricket Wireless and more.

I should have mentioned this earlier, but this week I’m at the Prepaid Press Expo this week. Hence the spotty updates. Anyway, it has been nothing but an informative conference. Speakers from all around the prepaid realm have given us insight into the future of the industry. One topic, though, that I’d like to mention now, and which I’ll elaborate on later, is the convergence of prepaid wireless and stored value cards. The tone of this conference has me, along with just about everyone else here, thinking that the future successes in the prepaid realm will be those who integrate their prepaid wireless services with other prepaid services — such as money transfers, landline long distance, mobile banking services, etc. Basically, the idea is to give consumer value-added services which can tie directly into their prepaid cell phone service.

This will all become a lot more clear when I have more than a paragraph to flesh out the idea. I know we have a number of regular commenters, so I’d like to open up the forum. How do you, the prepaid users, see stored value cards enhancing your prepaid experience?

This post was taken from Prepaidreviews.com - a top source of information on prepaid cell phones and prepaid providers like Verizon INPulse, Cricket Wireless and more.

No, we’re still not going to see MetroPCS service in the Boston area until the first quarter of 2009. But that doesn’t mean they’re not hard at work on it. They’re working with NextG to lay the groundwork, according to Wicked Local Cambridge. This will include service in Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Medford, and other surrounding towns. It will be part of the company’s Northeast expansion, which has started in Philadelphia, and will further expand to New York City in 2009.

NextG plans to install equipment at 24 sites in Cambridge and should be completed by late September, Delsman said. The city had NextG install some equipment four months ago, before granting final approval, so residents could see the final product and have time to voice any concerns, he said.

The system includes underground fiber-optic cables and overhead antennas attached to existing utility poles belonging to NSTAR and Verizon on more than 30 Cambridge streets, according to plans filed with the city’s License Commission.

The city’s Pole and Conduit Commission has approved 18 NextG license petitions since March and authorized the company to “install manholes, lay, maintain and use conduits and make service connections, and extend wires therein for the transmission of telecommunications data over fiber-optic cable,” according to license commission records.

It’s no wonder why so few companies set up wireless networks. They’re a lot of work, and even more money. The spectrum itself cost Metro $313 million. I wonder how much more on top of that building the network will cost.

This post was taken from Prepaidreviews.com - a top source of information on prepaid cell phones and prepaid providers like Verizon INPulse, Cricket Wireless and more.

It looks like Net10 is looking to redefine themselves as a prepaid brand. First, we saw that they introduced an unlimited calling plan, undercutting the competition in both cost, $80 per month, and features, as they included unlimited text messaging. Now we’re hearing, via the trusty Ian, that they’re introducing two new plans, both on a yearly basis.

The first is a one-year card, which provides 2,000 minutes for $200. For many, this will not make a difference. It is the same rate as Net10 normally charges, 10 cents per minute. Further, it might burden some customers, as many don’t want to pay the full yearly price up front. But it does help those who can’t be bothered to re-up every 60 days.

The other plan makes a bit more sense. It’s $400 for two years of service. However, you get 5,000 minutes here, so it knocks calls down to 8 cents per minute, and texts down to 4 cents. So not only are you getting a great per-minute rate, but you’re also getting a beyond stellar price for two years of cell phone service.

Yes, this seems like a step towards contract service. In some ways, it can be considered worse. Instead of agreeing to pay monthly and then paying an early termination fee to get out of your contract, with Net10 you’re paying it all up front. No way to get out of that.

In the end, it depends on your needs. Net10 is just providing the options.

This post was taken from Prepaidreviews.com - a top source of information on prepaid cell phones and prepaid providers like Verizon INPulse, Cricket Wireless and more.

By now, most people are familiar with ringback tones. You know, the songs that play while you’re waiting for your buddy to pick up the phone. The biggest complaint about these is that they get old. Really fast. I had a friend who had “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” as her ringback tone for the better part of two years. That got a little annoying. With Virgin Mobile, you won’t run into this issue. They’ve just teamed with LiveWire Mobile to create ringback playlists. Now you can treat your friends to a rotating set of songs, rather than the same on over and over again.

Ringback playlists will feature 10 different genre channels, including hip-hop, pop, rock, alternative, television and movie classics, country, and more. The plan is to add more of these channels, presumably creating a large number of playlists. These ringback playlists can be further set to play on a certain day, time of day, or for a particular caller.

Wes Radez, director of mobile content, Virgin Mobile USA, said, “Adding this innovative feature is a natural extension of our very popular ringback service and gives our customers a way to automatically keep their playlists fresh and share their favorite artists and music with friends and family.”

The service, of course, is not free. It’s $3.49 per month, though that’s not the only charge you’ll incur. There’s an additional $1.49 fee for the ringback subscription. So all in all you’re looking at $5 per month for the privilege of allowing other people to hear music when they call you. If that’s your bag, then Virgin’s got the best solution out there.

This post was taken from Prepaidreviews.com - a top source of information on prepaid cell phones and prepaid providers like Verizon INPulse, Cricket Wireless and more.

Last week, J.D. Power and Associates released a semi-annual survey on the state of customer service in the wireless industry. While Verizon took home top honors, that’s not the main point of this. What caught my attention, and what surely was of note to those who leave comments on our reviews, is that wait time for customer service is up to 4.4 minutes on average. Yikes. That’s up 34 percent from last year, when the average was 3.3 minutes on hold. This cannot be good for the wireless industry’s spotty, to be kind, reputation regarding how they treat their customers.

What makes this figure more troubling is that about half of U.S. wireless subscribers had to contact customer service over the past year. That’s about 125 million customers, 75 percent of whom used the phone to call customer service — and wait their average of 4.4 minutes to talk to someone.

To me, if there truly was a high level of competition in the wireless space, companies would be getting better at customer service, as to attract a larger subscriber base. Instead, they’re regressing. What can we make of this? It’s tough to say. Many of the major carriers received scored fairly well. On the 110-point scale, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Alltel all ranked over 100, while AT&T sat at 97. Sprint, of course, brought down the bar, ranking at 79, where the lowest score could be 70.

Does this mean prepaid carriers are bringing the number down? Judging by our user comments, and search strings like this, yeah, that could be the case.

This post was taken from Prepaidreviews.com - a top source of information on prepaid cell phones and prepaid providers like Verizon INPulse, Cricket Wireless and more.

According to a study conducted a few months ago, simply having a cell phone can improve one’s earning power. Of course, so can having consistent Internet access. The overarching point is that the more connected you are, the more opportunities you’ll be open to. The Tennessee Department of Safety, in partnership with Tracfone, is taking a step in this direction. According to WSMV Nashville, they plan to hand out cell phones to 800,000 families. So not only is this good news, but it’s a hefty helping of good news.

The main idea of this — and it makes sense, coming from the Department of Safety — is to give these families unlimited access to 911 calls. MarketWatch lets us know that the exact number of recipients is 812,807, and that they will also receive 60 free minutes per month.

The program will last for one year, at which time families will need to resubmit their information to see if they qualify for another year. The hope, I suppose, is that many families can use the cell phone as an earning tool, and will not be eligible next year.

This post was taken from Prepaidreviews.com - a top source of information on prepaid cell phones and prepaid providers like Verizon INPulse, Cricket Wireless and more.

You might have seen this elsewhere over the past day or so. We covered the Virgin Mobile TNT over a month ago. Looks like it’s ready for purchase now. You can nab it for $20. Not a bad deal at all.

This post was taken from Prepaidreviews.com - a top source of information on prepaid cell phones and prepaid providers like Verizon INPulse, Cricket Wireless and more.