Sprint Nextel Corp. retooled its mainstay price plans, the Fair and Flexible option and Free Incoming plans, and moved its off-peak calling time up to 7 p.m.
The carrier’s changes put its plans generally in line with the offerings of rivals such as Verizon Wireless and Cingular Wireless L.L.C. Sprint Nextel’s new options include Fair and Flexible plans for $40 a month for up to 400 minutes; $60 per month for 1,000 minutes; and $80 monthly for up to 1,400 minutes. Comparatively, Cingular and Verizon Wireless offer 450 minute plans for $40; 900 minutes at the $60 price point; and 1,350 monthly minutes for $80.
Sprint Nextel essentially bumped up its prices slightly, but included a perk that used to be a $5 add-on to its plans: peak calling starting at 7 p.m. Most of the industry counts night minutes starting at 9 p.m. Senior wireless analyst William Ho of Current Analysis noted, “it remains to be seen if the new 7 p.m. off-peak calling feature will push the market to match.”
However, Sprint Nextel’s larger competitors also include free on-network calling-for which Sprint Nextel charges an additional $5.
As with the original draw of its Fair & Flexible offering, subscribers still pay $5 for each 50-minute bucket in excess of their allotted plan minutes, with a different upper limit of $5 increments for each plan that then transitions to 10 cents per-minute overage charges.
Sprint Nextel also has shaken up its Free Incoming plans’ entry point, lowering it from $50 to $40 per month for 300 anytime minutes. The old $110 unlimited Free Incoming plan now is $100. Sprint Nextel began offering the Free Incoming plan following Sprint Corp.’s acquisition of Nextel Communications Inc. last year.
“Sprint has acknowledged that this niche plan, which was asking premium pricing, was not as successful as it needed to be and now these changes will provide more compelling price and functionality,” Ho concluded.
In terms of Sprint Nextel’s push-to-talk services, iDEN customers now can access the operator’s Fair and Flexible plans instead of the legacy Nextel plans.
“They’re trying to make it easier for the customer base to look [at both services] and say the offerings are pretty standard across both,” said Weston Henderek, senior wireless analyst at Current Analysis.
The carrier also cut the cost of adding PTT service on individual plans (whether CDMA or iDEN) from $10 per line to $5 in a move to drive consumer PTT usage off of Sprint Nextel’s iDEN network and onto its CDMA network.
Sprint Nextel already has announced an ambitious schedule to launch even faster CDMA2000 1x EV-DO Revision A service by 2008, which is expected to provide PTT service on par with that of the iDEN network. The carrier has committed to keep the iDEN network running through at least 2010.
