Cingular tweaks pricing for data, messaging

ATLANTA—Cingular Wireless L.L.C. has turned to flat-rate bundles for messaging. The move mirrors pricing strategies from other national carriers, some of which have been offering flat-rate bundles for messaging for about a year and a half, according to a Current Analysis research note.

The flat-rate packages mean that consumers don’t have to distinguish between text and multimedia messaging because they both come out of the same bucket of allowed messages. For $5 per month, Cingular subscribers can use 200 messages, and at the $20 price point that limit goes up to 3,000 messages.

Cingular has been “one of the last holdouts for flat-rate messaging among the national carriers,” noted analyst William Ho of Current Analysis.

Before the change, Cingular had separate packages for text and multimedia messages, charging $5 for 200 text messages and another $5 for 40 multimedia messages. Cingular’s rate for text messages sent and received without a messaging plan is 10 cents apiece.

Cingular also adjusted its MediaNet bundled offerings. For $10 per month, users get 400 text or multimedia messages plus 1 megabyte of data use. At $15, the messages jump to 1,000 messages and the data usage to 5 MB. For $20, the message figure drops down to 200 text or multimedia units, but the user gets unlimited data use and unlimited access to Cingular Video. The carrier also added a package at the $30 per month mark, consisting of 1,000 messages, unlimited data use and unlimited Cingular Video.

Ho concluded that the change is likely to help drive improvement in Cingular’s data revenues.