Plans currently limited to just four approved Sprint devices, and it’s a terrible deal
Sprint is working to expand its plan options for those looking to save a little money by launching own-branded prepaid offerings. After previously pushing prepaid customers to its lower brands Boost and Virgin, Sprint is now bringing things in-house with two plans and four devices that keep monthly costs lower. Things break down to choosing either a $45 plan with unlimited talk and text but no data (okay…) or a $60 plan for unlimted talk, text and data — with 2.5GB of full-speed data, throttled thereafter.
As you’d expect from Sprint, the plans are limited to just a handful of approved devices that can be purchased from Sprint — no word on BYOD right now. If you choose to go prepaid, you have the option of a Moto G ($99), a Samsung Galaxy S3 ($299), Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini ($349) or a pre-owned iPhone 4S ($199). Sprint says it plans to expand the device offerings this year, and also start to include featurephones and appropriate plans for the cheaper devices. Though we wouldn’t expect anything approaching a high-end device to show up on the prepaid side of things — Sprint wants your expensive phone to be running on its expensive plans.
Actually, in their current state, it’s hard to understand why a single person would be interested in using these prepaid plans.
Although they may be cheaper than Sprint’s postpaid offerings, they’re generally more expensive and a lower value than pretty much every other prepaid service out there. Even Boost and Virgin, which operate on the Sprint network (including LTE) are a minimum of $10 cheaper per month and offer far more devices to choose from. AT&T’s GoPhone prepaid plans are $60 per month as well, but you can bring any device you want. AT&T’s new Cricket prepaid brand (transitioning from Aio Wireless) is also much cheaper than Sprint prepaid, again offering LTE and also letting you bring any device you want to the network. Prepaid MVNOs like Straight Talk and even T-Mobile’s own-branded prepaid plans all offer a better value for your money than Sprint’s new plans.
It’s almost as if Sprint plans on simply trapping customers who are part of its network into heading over the prepaid plans simply because they’re cheaper than the postpaid ones. It’s clear to see at this point that unless Sprint changes its prices — not to mention the device selection — the only way it’ll have prepaid customers is if they don’t shop anywhere else.
Source: Sprint