America Movil announced January 16th that its subsidiary TracFone Wireless has completed the acquisition of substantially all the assets of Start Wireless Group, commonly known as Page Plus Cellular."
---This is today's announcement from PagePlus.
When PP did a TV campaign couple years ago, many PP lovers were happy to see that. I said: a very bad thing, because it only meant that PP had a new greedy owner and/or it was seeking for a buyer. Nobody listened to me. I did not know how to argue with them, I don't own a MBA, but I have my common sense and unique vision.
So, what we can expect from PP from now on? This is a photo I took several days ago in a store:
As you see, for $100 you only get 400 minutes for a year from Tracfone while you can get 2000 minutes from PP for $80. A difference of more than 6x, $0.25/min vs. $0.04/min, now from the same company, and don't forget PP's network, Verizon, is way better. Will TracFone lower its current price to match that of PP? If not, what's the other result(s)? Use your common sense.
Enjoy while it lasts, and be prepared like an old Chinese saying: 人无远虑，必有近忧。
预付价格方面，PP早已不是最便宜的，没发现任何计划的价格可跟lycamobile比；手机兼容性方面，CDMA比不了GSM。优势好像只是verizon网络全国范围内覆盖更多。不难推断，PP的忠实客户并不是完全受价格驱使；那些追求更便宜又不需要verizon的应该已经离开PP了。几年来，PP虽然陆续的降价，但除非可以保持最便宜，最终能留住的用户只是那些倾向于用verizon的。这样，Tracfone如对pp用户涨价会获利更多。
ReplyDeleteI am a happy PP customer, have been worrying about tracfone's purchases, but I could not find any alernative with comparable quality and service. I have tried tmobile, the coerage was hit and miss; I have a relative whom I called the best ATT advertising for NOT using its services. do you have any other suggestion? TIA.
ReplyDeleteI never seek for the best and/or cheapest, but good enough on quality/performance and price. PP has never been the cheapest, but it is pretty much the only one that's cheap and good enough.
ReplyDeleteI've been relying on VO3G for about a year now, so I don't worry about PP or any voice services because I no longer use them. So my suggestion is a phone that does good enough VO3G (Stellar, S3, S4, Note 2...) and an unlimited EVDO service. EVDO is not as fast as 4G/LTE, but it is everywhere and good enough for VO3G. ATT and TMOBILE often switch to EDGE, too slow for VO3G.
BTW, I just found this SIP phone, Sipdroid + G729:
http://bbs.gfan.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=3232780