Key Highlights
- That balance is slowly changing in the US as prepaid adoption is rising while postpaid growth has stalled or even slipped in some cases.
- The main driver is customer frustration with steady price escalations, including fee hikes, smaller autopay discounts, and direct plan increases.
- For example, Verizon recently cut its myPlan autopay discount from ten dollars to five dollars, and all three major carriers have raised their infrastructure fees.
- T-Mobile also stopped including taxes and fees in its advertised pricing. I have argued before that prepaid is now the better choice for many consumers.
- The real questions are what caused this shift, whether it could have been avoided, and how worried the big three should be about prepaid competitors.
