MetroPCS drops plan pricing, adds features

MetroPCS will shortly be updating their website to reflect a $5 per month drop in rates for their $45 and $50 plans. The now-$45 plan gets social networking, navigation and e-mail, whereas the $40 plan now includes unlimited local, long distance, text messaging and web access. Our information page on MetroPCS will be updated as soon as the company’s website is.

Read more at CNet

MetroPCS Launches $5 Unlimited International Calling

MetroPCS recently added flat-rate international calling to their stable of additional features available with their unlimited service plans. The cost: $5 per month.

Though their site doesn’t show a direct table as to which destinations are included in the unlimited plan, MetroPCS does include a tool to check whether a given phone unmber would be included in the plan. They also state that the destinations covered number over one thousand, in more than one hundred countries.

The unlimited direct-dial international calling feature (no 800 numbers or PINs to remember) is even available when using coverage provided by MetroPCS partner carriers, which include, among other providers, CricKet.

With features like this one and phones like the Samsung Finesse coming to MetroPCS, they’re more and more becoming a solid alternative to contract-based carriers on a feature, as well as a price, basis.

Richardson’s MetroPCS plans to build on niche with frugal cellphone users

Richardson-based MetroPCS Communications Inc. has been on an undeniable tear recently, targeting cellphone users who are keeping a tighter rein on their pocketbooks.

The question is whether the young wireless provider can hold on to those thrifty customers as the economy improves and a penny-pincher’s fancy turns to thoughts of iPhones. Read more

MetroPCS, CricKet intro special plans for data-driven phones

Recently MetroPCS introduced two high-end phones. One is the well-known BlackBerry Curve, available on all the national carriers but never before seen on an unlimited provider. The other: an “iPhone killer” Samsung, the Finesse, made specifically for MetroPCS to support the newer, “AWS-band” parts of their network in places like Philadelphia. Both phones, in addition to high prices outright (to be expected from a provider who doesn’t require a contract and provides unlimited service on their own network), require a special $50 plan to quench their hunger for data.

CricKet will also be launching such a plan, albeit as a $15 feature addon, with the advent of their first touch-screen, the Motorola Evoke QA4. The rationale in both cases: if a phone can browse the real web (as the QA4, the FInesse and the Curve can), data usage is going to be a lot higher than a mere “dumb phone” might generate. Read more