I have a second landline phone at my house. It costs me $55/month, though I make very few calls on it.
I have a Verizon plan which allows me to add mobiles for $9.99/month, and any usage on that phone gets subtracted from the minutes I have available for use every month.
Basically, by moving this second line to my Verizon account, I will save $45/month. That move is coming soon.
When people lose their job, they keep their cell phone. It’s that simple. Many will pay their cell phone bill BEFORE rent. Few, if any, industries survied the early 90’s better than wireless.
I think the industry will continue to grow, but barely. They’ll lose some of the teen market and people will buy crappier phones, but landline substitution for both voice and data will continue.
There may be some price/market share battles through the tough times so some weaker players (Sprint?) may get eaten up. Capitalization and customer service will be key to retention.
I also think T-Mobile is not in the best position due to the fact that they are on a low-capacity system but likely don’t have the capital to upgrade it, and yes – they need to upgrade it. If you aren’t going to listen to CDMAEng on this matter, you might as well not even bother asking anyone on this board.
Cricket has $500M – $1B in capital and are focused on the right customer base.
“Everyone’s a Cricket customer now.”
HEH, HEH.
