Sprint calls T-Mobile 'ghetto' in exceptionally tasteless ad

Quote: Pacomartin

But the idea that a company that Sprint wanted to merge with until August 2014 that has almost a quarter of a billion subscribers is actually catering to ghetto drug dealers is marketing genius.

TracFone is the drug dealer burner phone
favorite. You can get one at Walmart for
10 bucks, use it a couple times and dump
it. I've used Trac for years and it's never
let me down.

Quote: Evenbob

TracFone is the drug dealer burner phone
favorite. You can get one at Walmart for
10 bucks, use it a couple times and dump
it. I've used Trac for years and it's never
let me down.

América Móvil is the financial backbone of the family of Carlos Slim Helú, the wealthiest man in Mexico, and for many years the wealthiest man in the world. The corporation is the largest in Mexico by a huge margin, as the 2nd biggest company is a fraction of its size. They operate all over Latin America and now Europe.

Its subsidiary in the USA is TracFone Wireless, Inc. which sells under the brands TracFone, NET10 Wireless, Straight Talk, SIMPLE Mobile, Telcel América, Page Plus Cellular and Total Wireless. It is one of the leading national pre-paid wireless service provider in the U.S. All divisions together have over 26 million subscribers, so while they are the first choice for burner phones, they also have a lot of legitimate budget customers.

In the USA they do not own any towers, preferring to buy time and bandwidth wholesale. I have bought a phone from them for $5.

No one advertises against Tracfone or any subsidiaries, because they are buying time from all of the four primary host networks. I don't think any of the four majors sells a plan from the mainline service for less than unlimited talk and text. The "by the minute" sellers are all mobile virtual network operators (MVNO) who resell time bought wholesale. Each host netowork owns at least one MVNO: AT&T owns cricket, Sprint owns Boost and Virgin, T-mobile owns MetroPCS, and Verizon has a division called "Verizon Prepaid".

If you purchase a plan at Verizon they begin at $50 a month, although some grandfathered plans are less. Verizon Prepaid has a $15 and a $30 and a $45 plan available. Corporations and many individuals tend not to want to switch to prepaid plans or to buy from MVNOs.

Quote: Pacomartin

In the USA they do not own any towers, preferring to buy time and bandwidth wholesale. I have bought a phone from them for $5.
.

Buying a burner phone makes no money
for the company, it costs far more than
$5 to make it. It's obviously the minutes
is where the profit is.

Quote: Evenbob

It's obviously the minutes is where the profit is.

I think that is true of a lot of businesses. Certainly printers are incredibly cheap, as all the profit is in selling you the ink. But I don't think that manufacturing cost of a basic flip phone is more than about $20.

But certainly in the USA prepaid telephone service is now about 30% of the phones in service.

Quote: Pacomartin

I think that is true of a lot of businesses. Certainly printers are incredibly cheap, as all the profit is in selling you the ink. But I don't think that manufacturing cost of a basic flip phone is more than about $20.

But certainly in the USA prepaid telephone service is now about 30% of the phones in service.

I expect the cost of maunufacturing is way less than that once the R&D and set up cost for the line are paid for.

Quote: Pacomartin

But certainly in the USA prepaid telephone service is now about 30% of the phones in service.

Last July I got the best deal from Tracfone.
365 days and 200min for $39.99, it's usually
$99. It went to 400 min because I have a
double your min phone.

I have 100 days and 300 min left. I only used
100 min in the last 9 months. I'm going to
start looking for that deal again, best I've
ever seen.

Quote: kenarman

I expect the cost of maunufacturing is way less than that once the R&D and set up cost for the line are paid for.

The Model LG 440G that Home Depot sells for $5 is sold on Amazon for about $14 plus shipping.

Most people start on Tracfone with one of these plans, with optional text messages. However, some add data on in the future,
60 MINUTES INCLUDED 90 Service Days $19.99
120 MINUTES INCLUDED 90 Service Days $29.99
200 MINUTES INCLUDED 90 Service Days $39.99
450 MINUTES INCLUDED 90 Service Days $79.99
400 MINUTES INCLUDED 365 Service Days $99.99
+ 1000 TEXTS $10 additional

Quote: Pacomartin

The Model LG 440G that Home Depot sells for $5.
60 MINUTES INCLUDED 90 Service Days $19.99

That's the fone I buy at Walmart. That's the plan I
get. You can see why 365 days and 400min was
such a good deal. Minutes don't matter to me,
it's days I'm buying.

Quote: Evenbob

Minutes don't matter to me, it's days I'm buying.

I was told that Tracfone sells an extension plan for $50 for 365 days that just continues your current balance of minutes. A good deal for those people who only use their cell phone if the car is sinking in quicksand and three minutes of banging on the windows is producing no results.

Quote: Evenbob

That's the fone I buy at Walmart. That's the plan I
get. You can see why 365 days and 400min was
such a good deal. Minutes don't matter to me,
it's days I'm buying.

My wife and I each had the same plan and throw away phone.

We had one for ten years and shared it when we would leave home. I used it when I would camp uplake, basically a 911 type phone. I only bought time as well, never ran out of minutes.

Then I had to stay in Phoenix for a week plus at a time. In the old days, I had a phone card for long distance cheaply for years, they seem to have lost all popularity, and hotels either expect you to have a cell or charge you an exorbitant fee for using the room phone. [which is probably a bacteria farm]

So I am stuck there and I see people all around happily talking and surfing the web and blissfully doing all the digital things people like to do, and me and my trac phone can't make a call, from dang near anywhere!

Frustrating to the max. Tracfone always served me adequately until then. But it was imperative for me to be able to make and receive calls, and I couldn't do it anymore. It seems there is some kind of pissing match between Verizon and AT&T, and they both cut Tracfone out of the loop.

My kid gifted me an intelligent phone which as the AT&T plan and I like it, but down in that part of the country, Verizon blows the doors off AT&T for reception, and the tracfone I let expire with 1100 minutes on it after years of buying a year at a time. Phones just hate me for some reason.