For the longest time in the U.S. it was nearly impossible to get a BlackBerry without signing a two-year contract. You might have been able to go month-to-month after your initial contract expired, but if you wanted to upgrade you’d have to do the whole contract thing over again. Lately we’ve seen a number of prepaid BlackBerry service pop up. These include regional carriers like MetroPCS and Cricket, but also subsidiaries of Sprint, Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile. Over the weekend Boy Genius Report passed along a rumor that Verizon would be rolling out its own prepaid BlackBerry service. Will the first prepaid BlackBerry offering straight from a major U.S. carrier help change the playing field?
That’s the internal announcement for the service. It looks like a pretty basic addition. Unless Verizon ups the charge for prepaid, it will cost the same $30 for a data plan add-on as it does for postpaid. Since Verizon’s monthly prepaid plans are the same as their postpaid plans plus $5, this should be an easy transition. I’m guessing you’ll need to have a monthly plan, rather than a daily access fee plan, in order to get the prepaid BlackBerry service.
We’ve been hearing about Verizon’s entry into the prepaid BlackBerry space since earlier this year, when they announced the monthly prepaid plans. That rumor seemed to die out, but this brings it front and center. There is, unfortunately, no change on the Verizon website, which is curious since the material from Verizon suggests an August 22 release date. I’m still confident we’ll see this soon, though. I do wonder how many people will deem the extra $5 per month, plus the extra cost for the handset, a worthy investment.
