Carriers, particularly competitive carriers, and their sales partners have a big opportunity in targeting small business owners looking to cut overhead as a way of dealing with recession-related pressure on their bottom lines. Pitching them on getting rid of contract-based cell phone service in favor of much cheaper unlimited prepaid wireless plans is a growing way to snag new customers, according to small business expert Liz Franklin.
With unlimited minutes, text and Web access for as little as $45 to $60 a month from prepaid wireless offerings, a small business could save $250-$800 per year for each wireless phone that it either owns outright or subsidizes through reimbursed expenses, she says. That's a big pot-sweetener for an operator looking to poach customers from the big 4, particularly since "prepaid" no longer equals "basic feature phone."
"Prepaid wireless is rapidly becoming a no-brainer for small businesses: As the recession grinds on, small businesses are cutting away more and more overhead in order to keep their doors open," she said. "With telecommunication costs being the third or fourth largest expense overall for a business, this is a big waste target for many small companies. And if you can save $250-$800 per wireless phone each year, why in the world wouldn't you take a hard look at the prepaid option?"
She added: "And we haven't even talked about billing errors, which occur in as many as 7 percent of phone bills!"
Just as small businesses are only now waking up to the cost-cutting potential offered by prepaid phones, so, too, are prepaid wireless companies starting to reach out to small businesses. Prepaid wireless phones are now much more advanced than they used to be – including such phones as the Samsung R451C and the LG Rumor touchscreen – and provide for full access to e-mail, business-style texting, the mobile Web, and so on.
“The bottom line here is that prepaid no longer means low-tech when it comes to phones," said Allen Hepner, executive director at the New Millenium Research Council think tank. "One of the biggest raps on prepaid phone service was that the phones were behind the state-of-the-art handsets. Many consumers who were outside of the traditional prepaid consumer profile no doubt were put off by the notion of ‘going backwards’ in cell phone technology in order to use a prepaid service. The good news for those consumers is that the prepaid industry is catching up and can now cater to their needs."
