Subject: [NEXTEL-1] MinuteShare Offers New Take On Bundled Minutes

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 05 Jun 2003 18:24:23 -0400

MinuteShare Offers New Take On Bundled Minutes 
By Sue Marek
June 5, 2003
news@2 direct

Cingular Wireless and its parents SBC Communications and BellSouth are testing a
new plan that not only bundles wireless and wireline minutes but allows users with
large buckets of night and weekend minutes on their wireless plan to use those
minutes on their landline phone.

Called MinuteShare, the plan is being tested in Texas with existing customers who
have both SBC local and domestic long distance service and Cingular Wireless
service. According to the company, the service is designed for people who use the
large night and weekend minutes typically found in wireless plans to make long
distance calls from home. With MinuteShare, they can use those minutes to make
long distance calls 'while enjoying the clarity and quality of their home wireline
phone,' the press release says. 

While this may seem like a slap in the face to Cingular Wireless' service, the
company's Chief Marketing Officer Marc Lefar says that MinuteShare enables
Cingular to take advantage of its affiliation with its parent companies and 'offer
a valuable bundled service to consumers.'

The new plan will be sold through the companies' call centers and retail outlets
and will be available commercially later this year. When launched, the MinuteShare
plan will have various packages ranging from low to high usage for a single
monthly rate and will be available in home, regional and national wireless
coverage areas. However, the company notes that incoming calls to the home
wireline phone will not count toward the monthly minutes and all charges will
appear on one bill. 

The companies (Cingular, SBC and BellSouth) say they hope the MinuteShare plan
will help combat churn from all facets of their business. And some analysts agree
with that presumption. According to Rudy Baca, vice president and global
strategist at the Precursor Group, this type of plan will bode well for wireless
companies that have wireline ties. But for those without a wireline branch such as
Nextel Communications, this type of bundling could be a problem. Baca says that
wireless companies without a wireline side may have a short future because these
types of bundled offerings won't be available to them. 
 
http://www.wirelessweek.com/index.asp?layout=document&doc_id=120560&verticalID=3\

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