Sprint's Prepaid Strategy

Since completing the Virgin Mobile acquisition last year, and bringing all of its prepaid efforts under the Sprint Prepaid Group, it's been known that Sprint was in the process of rationalizing, freshening and repositioning its prepaid lineup. The new focus and service offerings were announced today. In a nutshell, it is well-thought out and very well targeted strategy.

Sprint has logically segmented the market, and then gone after it with four very different offerings that address each segment. While others spend billions developing, then abandoning brands -- the Cingular brand comes immediately to mind -- Sprint clearly understands branding better than anyone in the industry today. Sprint's plan has something for everybody, in a good way, and seems to be a winner that will help the company's turnaround.

I was quoted in Light Reading today, described as "prepaid analyst." As those who work with me know, I help young companies develop strategies and land their first big deals. Every once in awhile, I work with big companies on new initiatives in the mobile space. I am not a consultant or analyst in the traditional sense, but more a hands-on, interim business development executive working with clients on projects or strategic deal efforts. Almost all of my work is in mobile applications and services. I have been working with one client on a new service geared to prepaid subscribers, and have thus been paying close attention to developments in the prepaid space. This has coincided with the accelerating growth of the prepaid segment in the US, which as the most competitive space in wireless, has been fun to watch.

Comments

[Rick Prepaid Phone Guy]

There has been a lot of growth in the prepaid segment. So many of households in the US do not have a good enough credit rating to get a contract account.