Cingular to begin pre-paid push

May 03 2005 - 05:33 PM ET | Cingular

Following on the heels of T-Mobile USA, Cingular Wireless will begin to market its pre-paid mobile service. The company has done very little to sell pre-paid since the AT&T Wireless merger. Cingular will use the AT&T Wireless Go Phone brand for pre-paid service, instead of Cingular's previous KIC brand. About 7% of Cingular's 50 million subscribers are pre-paid. Pre-paid services attracts users with little or bad credit or very low-volume usage. Industry insiders see pre-paid service as one of the largest growth areas in the US wireless marketplace. Nextel's Boost Mobile brand is one of the fastest growing pre-paid services. Thanks to unique push-to-talk billing (flat fee for unlimited daily use, charged daily), Boost boasts average revenue per user numbers that look similar to post-paid users.

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