Rumor: Sprint to retire Fair and Flexible plans on 01/07/07?

Written by Humberto Saabedra
Sprint
27 December 2006

style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">A poster
on  the HowardForums Sprint board has potentially revealed
Sprint’s plan changes at the beginning of the new year. Starting off,
we have the name change to Power Packs, likely to coincide with the
“Power Up” ad campaign. Next, instead of the bucket of minutes for
overage protection, customers would be relegated to a charge of
$0.45/minute overage, decreasing to $0.25/minute on the more
expensive price plans. Shared lines would keep the overage protection
at $5/50 and $10/100 minutes, the catch being customers would have to
call for the overage packages to be applied, or else be subject to the
aforementioned single minute rate. The rate plan changes are thought to
move more inline with both Verizon and Cingular pricing structures and
reports claiming that a majority of the customers had no need for the
overage protection.
The next few possible changes affect the incoming call plans. First is
the addition of mobile to mobile calling, and the elimination of
ReadyLink (Sprint’s 1xRTT based PTT system found on Sanyo and a few
Samsung handsets.) as an included service to push more people toward
Power Source (formerly Hybrid Network) handsets when available
nationwide. The last point is the convergence of iDEN dataplans to a
general service pack including messaging and mobile web access, with
the exception being Power Source having two packages, the only
difference being quantity of messages. ($10 for 1000 messages/unlimited
web, $15 unlimited messaging/unlimited web,) Also planned is the
elimination of the free month of Vision/Power Vision services, possibly
due to low consumer retention and customer issues involving paying for
Vision service when not used. Phonenews.com will stay on top of this
story and confirm it as soon as it is confirmed officially..
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