Wal-Mart Enters Prepaid Market

Seemingly dabbling in everything, discount giant Wal-Mart now plans to give prepaid providers a run for their money.

The store has teamed with American Movil. The pair will sell unlimited voice and text for $45 per month, under the brand Straight Talk. If you don’t need an unlimited plan, it gets even cheaper, with 1,000 minutes and 1,000 texts setting you back just $30.

What does this mean for relatively small prepaid companies like Leap Wireless and MetroPCS? Only time will tell, but it’s certainly competition they didn’t need. Just last week, phone giant AT&T announced a very competitive price for unlimited prepaid.

Shares of both Leap and MetroPCS were down about 1.5 percent in early afternoon trading.

Share this article: Email, Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Yahoo!MyWeb, Windows Live Favorites, Furl
Add this article feed to: RSS, My Yahoo, Newsgator, Bloglines

Read Comments [2]