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Walmart Family Mobile enters the postpaid war, reselling service from T-Mobile
Walmart's already firmly entrenched in the prepaid cellular business, offering handsets and service via Common Cents (Sprint) and Straight Talk (Verizon Wireless), but according to Greg Hall, vice president of merchandising at Walmart US, there's a "perception among customers that prepaid service doesn't offer access to the best phones or the best network quality." In order to combat that, the outfit will be launching a new postpaid service today dubbed Walmart Family Mobile. The actual fine print is somewhat confusing, as it offers the best of both the pre- and postpaid worlds; users will still pay their monthly bill at the end of the month, but no subsidization will take place on the phones themselves due to this being a no-contract ordeal. It'll cost $45 per month for unlimited calling and texting for the first line, and $25 per month for every extra line; unfortunately, data will be a pricey addition at $40 per month for 1GB... but at least that rolls over each month in case you don't use it all. Initially, Wally World will offer five handsets, with the flagship phone being Motorola's Cliq XT at $249. Frankly, we aren't too impressed at what's on offer here -- get unlimited data bundled with calling and texting for the same $45 / month, then we'll talk. Update: Official PR is now after the break, and that's a September 20th launch date, so next Monday. Update 2: So, Walmart's PR team contacted us to flesh out the data plan details that the AP sort of glossed over. Thankfully, the full skinny is far more attractive than what we were led to believe. In short, each line comes with 100MB of data (one-time); after you use that up, you've got a trio of prepaid 'WebPak' options to keep you going. $10 buys you an extra 200MB, $25 gets you 500MB and $40 gets you 1GB. Good stuff! [Thanks, Ksadd]
