‘Power Pack’ plans align Sprint Nextel with larger rivals: Big 3 now only differ on extras, handsets

Three of the national U.S. carriers are no longer differentiating on price points for service plans, instead relying on the details of the plans and add-on services to appeal to customers-along with handsets, of course.
Sprint Nextel Corp., Verizon Wireless and Cingular Wireless L.L.C. now offer the same number of anytime minutes available for the same price. The alignment was completed last week when Sprint Nextel replaced its “Fair & Flexible” plans with its new “Power Pack” plans, which line up at least phonetically with its “Power Up” ad campaign.
Sprint Nextel still undercuts its largest rivals with an entry level plan that includes 200 anytime calling minutes for $30 per month that includes unlimited night and weekend calling.
Instead of allowing customers to avoid overage charges by automatically adding $5 bundles of minutes when customers talk more than their allotted minutes, Sprint Nextel now requires its customers to estimate how much they might go over and pay accordingly (whether they end up using the minutes or not) at a price of $5 for 50 minutes of overage.
Overage per-minute costs have also been increased at Sprint Nextel; minutes in the past were charged at rates as low as 20 cents per minute for all plans, but now run between 25 cents to 45 cents depending on how many anytime minutes are included in the plan. Plans with more minutes get cheaper overage per-minute rates.
The carrier includes its signature off-peak calling starting at 7 p.m., unlimited night and weekend calling, and unlimited mobile-to-mobile.
To date, Verizon Wireless and Cingular have stuck to starting their off-peak calling at 9 p.m.
All three carriers have recently announced changes to casual text message pricing. (See related story on Page 11.) By March, the new standard among the carriers will be 15 cents to send or receive an SMS, unless the subscriber has a text messaging bundle.