Sprint Will Launch Airave Indoor Antena in Denver, Indianapolis

Sprint will begin to offer the Airave CDMA booster antenna, which is designed to be installed alongside a broadband internet connection similar to T-Mobile's new @Home service.

Unlike T-Mobile's offering, the Airave does not require new handsets, nor does it suffer from range and maximum user constraints, allowing three simultaneous users as well as providing a total useful range of 5000 square feet.

The unit will launch initially in the Denver and Indianapolis markets for $50, with monthly service fees of $15 dollars for a single line of service, and $30 dollars under family service plans.

Source: http://www.phonenews.com/content/view/2308/9/

Ariel Lin in Phone Card Ads

Enjoy =)

2007 JD Power and Associates Prepaid Wireless Customer Satisfaction Results

JD Power and Associates released their 2007 prepaid wireless customer satisfaction results yesterday and to no surprise Virgin Mobile was on top! Also this being the second year for the study, the customer satisfaction results seemed to be much improved over 2006 numbers. The reason for the improvement was mostly due to much more attractive plan offerings and better pricing.Virgin Mobile won the top spot for the second year in a row followed by AT&T, GO Phone, Boost Mobile and T-Mobile To Go.

Statistically:

• Prepaid users spend an average of $38 when purchasing additional airtime. Comparatively, the average monthly service cost for typical postpaid customers is $71.
  
• Prepaid customers report using 218 minutes per month, less than one-half as much as postpaid customers, who average 528 minutes per month.
  Approximately 59 percent of prepaid phones that are prepackaged with minutes are purchased from retail stores, while an additional 25 percent of customers report purchasing a prepackaged phone via the Internet.
• Approximately 16 percent of customers purchase activated minutes cards separately from their cell phones.
  The percentage of prepaid customers who use a card provided by their local retailer to purchase additional airtime minutes is equal to the percentage of customers who use the provider's Web site to do so 36 percent.
• Thirteen percent of prepaid customers use their handsets to purchase additional minutes in 2007, which has increased from 10 percent in 2006.

To read more about the survey and read the whole piece from the above quote, go to JD Power web site

Cell Phone & Cards Magic Trick

IDT Looses Appeal on Lawsuit by Former Executive

Alfred West, the current President & CEO of Xchange Telecom, Inc., had originally filed suit against IDT for what he claims was a breach of contract when he was forced out after only 6 months of employment (Feb 2001 to August 2001). West presented a handwritten agreement that he had signed by Howard Jonas which was reportedly to guarantee him 15 million over the life of the deal. It appears as if West, a former executive at Econophone and Viatel was given the promise of emplyment in exhange for brinign his contacts and much of the Viatel buisness and property rights on board. From what IDT contended, Wright falsely promised the rights to things he did not have any ownership of so therefore they let him walk and was the preliminary defense IDT used.The original decision was in favor of IDT claiming that he did not have sufficient right to be paid the remaining un-worked period of the contract but a court of appeals has just overturned this decision and sided in favor of Mr. West. If all stands up IDT will be forced to pay up.

To view the full court of appeals document click here

Blackstone Got Out of Trouble

Blackstone, a telecom company, has successfully fought the fine that the FCC brought against them. On February, Blackstone was charged with a $20,000 fine for failure to register with the FCC and pay the appropriate USF (Universal Service Fee). The Bureau is claiming they have made repeated requests of Blackstone to get in line and register but have received no response from Blackstone and no cooperation.

Blackstone apparently ignored requests from the FCC asking them to file and make certain types of paperwork available because they felt they are not a service provider, just a phone card distributor, so therefore there was no need to file. Like many other prepaid calling cards distributors, they have made claims as such to their end users (common practice).

While the $20,000 fine may not look like a lot, the amount was actualy increased significantly from the base fine for this type of infraction due to Blackstone's complete lack of response or cooperation with the Bureau. However, Blackstone has since provided the paper work proving that they are not a long distance carrier, just a distributor, and as a result the $20,000 fine has been removed and the matter dropped.

Source:
http://www.fcc.gov/eb/Orders/2007/DA-07-3235A1.html

Pizza & Phone Card Combo

A pizza chain out of Texas, Pizza Patron, will begin selling unlimited Mexico calling cards in all of their restaurants. The service is provided by BlagCard(TM) and the calls are mainly carried by at&t. Pizza Patron currently has over 60 stores in Texas as well as in a few surrounding states, with another 40 or so chains set to open within the next year.

Cards will be sold in $5, $10 and $30 denominations, delivering either 2, 7 or 30 days of unlimited calling to Mexico.

While the press release does not say if these cards will be available with delivery of a pizza, it is an interesting concept and truly a unique partnership the likes that this industry has never seen before.

Source:
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/07-23-2007/0004630312&EDATE=

International Calling Destinations on US Phone Cards

Below are the top called country from continental US on 2004. Although it's not up to date, but the data hasn't changed drastically, and still reflects the current market.


Breakdown by Continent:
North and Central America = 30% (this has no doubt decreased since 04)
South America = 19% (this has no doubt increased since 04)
Western Europe = 13%
Asia = 10%
Eastern Europe = 7%
Caribbean = 6%
Africa = 6%
Other = 9%


Breakdown Of Minutes Made Using US Calling Cards by Country:
Mexico 2,033.3 million minutes
Canada 948.9 million minutes
Columbia 801.3 million minutes
Brazil 629.6 million minutes
UK 489.5 million minutes
Dominican Republic 489.0 million minutes
El Salvador 406.7 million minutes
Guatemala 361.5 million minutes
India 331.4 million minutes
Germany 293.7 million minutes

IDT Telecom Cuts Back to Cover Loss

On Wednesday, June 7, IDT announced their 3rd quarter results and the picture looked bad. Their net loss, 15.9 million, was nearly double that of Q3 from 1 year ago (8.6 million). Revenue was announced at $485.4 million down from $547.2 million 1 year ago.

This seems to have caught many off guard as most analysts, who up until Wednesday had IDT stock as "hold," quickly changed their recommendations to "sell." While IDT officials kept up beat and political during the announcement, they drew no detailed plans of how they were going to turn the company around. Instead they kept blaming the poor performance on "the unfair business practices" of other calling card companies, a point of contention for them and the subject of an ongoing lawsuit.

As a result of the loss, IDT announced during their earnings call that they have just cut 300 jobs from the Telecom division. Add this to the 570 or so jobs cut in late summer last year and the company is pushing almost a 25% reduction in its work force from last year (Yahoo had IDT listed at 4,000 employees up until last week when they adjusted this number to 3,000).

Source:
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070606/earns_idt.html?.v=1

AT&T Wireless Adds More Flexibility to Prepaid Cell Phone Plans

America’s leading mobile phone carrier, AT&T Wireless, is making a new slate of calling and messaging features available to prepaid cell phone subscribers, in an attempt to make its GoPhone Pay-As-You-Go offering more flexible and competitive.
AT&T’s prepaid customers can now buy 3,000 additional Night & Weekend minutes at a fixed cost of $19.99/month, or 200 text and multimedia messages for $4.99. Mobile data bandwidth is also being offered on a prepaid basis, costing $9.99 for 5MB.
Prepaid airtime can now be rolled over from one month to the next, provided that a customer renews his or her services by the end of each 30-day billing period.

Source:
http://www.teleclick.ca/2007/06/att-wireless-adds-more-flexibility-to-prepaid-cell-phone-plans