How low will they go?
Wireless phone companies are in the middle of a price war that’s seen one after another announce a flat rate of $99 a month for unlimited calls inside the United States. Verizon kicked things off in February and AT&T and T-Mobile immediately followed. Soon after, Spring/Nextel rolled out two plans, including an even-cheaper $89 a monthly flat rate for bare bones domestic service.
Lower prices are good news for some small companies that couldn’t do business without their mobile phones. But it won’t make a big difference to others whose existing contracts include a shared pool of minutes that averages out to less than $99 a month per employee, according to one telephone industry consultant.
Either way, cut-rate unlimited calling plans are a sign of things to come, consultants and small business owners say. Once considered a business luxury, all-you-can-talk wireless voice service is quickly becoming a commodity. As prices drop, wireless carriers are coming up with new services to keep users from jumping ship – and revenues rolling in, sources say.
“They won’t keep customers if they focus on the cell phone as just a voice service,” says Anders Mikkelsen, managing director at Berlin Pacific, a New York City consultant that helps small and mid-sized companies pick the right phone plans. “They all have to have a new spin on what mobile is all about. It’s about communications, not just voice.”
Same price, different services
Though prices are the same, wireless carriers’ $99 a month unlimited calling plans differ slightly in what’s offered:
- Verizon — Includes unlimited voice, Internet access and Web-based e-mail
- AT&T — Includes unlimited voice calls
- T-Mobile — Includes unlimited voice, text messaging and IM
- Sprint/Nextel — Includes unlimited voice, data, text, email, Internet access, TV and music services and GPS. A stripped down $89 a month plan covers only unlimited voice and text messaging.
Tim Bates, with Bates Strategy Group, a Boulder, Colo., technology marketing consultant, recently switched two wireless phones to AT&T’s new $99 a monthly unlimited calling plan. “We live on our phones,” Bates says. “With a predictable bill, long calls and conference calls are not something we need to bill added charges for.” International calls are still an issue, but Bates says he uses Skype, the voice over Internet service, for those.
Flat-rate plans increasingly appealing
Cheaper rates for unlimited monthly wireless phone calls also sound good to Raza Imam, managing partner of Adaptive Solutions Inc., a five-year-old contract software developer in Chicago. Imam is on his cell phone an hour or two a day talking to a business partner and 15-person development team in Pakistan and to customers around the world. One month a few years back his mobile phone bill hit $900. “That was ugly,” Imam says. “It was a contract negotiation with a client, there was a lot of back and forth. We never want to do that again.”
When Imam’s current contract expires this month, he’ll consider moving to one of the new flat rate plans. Which one will depend on what his colleagues want, but whatever it is, it’ll have to include more than basic voice service. “That’s not the end all, be all,” he says. “The value-added services will tip the scale for me.” One new feature that’s caught his eye: T-Mobile’s Hotspot@Home, which for an extra $10 a month lets customers send and receive unlimited calls nationwide over a home Wi-Fi Internet connection. “You can make calls and it doesn’t subtract them from your pool of minutes. That’s an attractive feature for me,” he says.
