Big Data. Big Decisions
InformationWeek
Special Coverage Series

Commentary

Eric Zeman

Boost Mobile Promises To 'Shrink' Loyal Customers' Bills

Boost Mobile unveiled a new service concept that will reduce the monthly bill for customers who pay on time and stick around for at least six months.

For those who always pay their bill on time and plan to stay with Boost Mobile for the long term, the company's new "Shrinkage" plan promises some nice rewards. Boost Mobile's Monthly Unlimited with Shrinkage plan will reduce the monthly bill at the 6-, 12-, and 18-month intervals by $5 each time, for a total bill reduction of $15.

Customers who enroll in the $50 Monthly Unlimited with Shrinkage plan, for example, will see their bill shrink from $50 for the first six months, down to $45 for months 6-12, to $40 for months 13-18, and to $35 for months 18+. The plan requires users to pay their bill on time.

It also applies to the BlackBerry Monthly Unlimited with Shrinkage plan, which drops from $60 initially to $55, $50, and finally $45, after 6, 12, and 18 months, respectively.

"At a time when consumers are looking for ways to save their hard-earned money, we're rewarding Boost customers by helping them shrink their monthly payments," said Bob Stohrer, vice president-Marketing, Boost Mobile. "Throughout the year, we've enhanced our device lineup with Android and Blackberry devices and added more benefits to our Monthly Plan. Now, we're introducing even more value, all with no annual contracts. Shrinkage is yet another demonstration of Boost's commitment to 'unwronging' wireless."

Boost Mobile is being nice about late payments, too. Let's say you pay on time for four months, pay late for the fifth month, but then pay on time against for the sixth and seventh months. After you've made six on-time payments (even with an interruption), Boost Mobile will shrink your bill. It just takes a bit longer.

It's worth pointing out, however, that Boost Mobile chiefly uses Sprint's iDEN network to provide its prepaid mobile services. Even though it offers both Android and BlackBerry smartphones, mobile data speeds are abysmally slow, almost to the point of being worthless. However, the Monthly Unlimited plans do include unlimited voice, messaging and data.

The new Shrinkage option goes into effect starting Thursday, October 14. New customers will be enrolled in the program automatically. Existing customers will have to sign up via Boost's customer service tools.



Related Reading


More Insights




Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags

These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags

These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

BYTE encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, BYTE moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. BYTE further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.

Follow InformationWeek

By The Numbers

What Are Your Primary Concerns About Using Big Data Software?

Base: 417 respondents at organizations using or planning to deploy data analytics, BI or statistical analysis software
Data: InformationWeek 2013 Analytics, Business Intelligence and Information Management Survey of 541 business technology professionals, October 2012

What Do You Think?

What's your attitude about SQL analysis on top of Hadoop?
We want fast, standard SQL analysis capabilities on Hadoop ASAP
Hadoop is for unstructured data; SQL is for relational databases
We'll give SQL on Hadoop a try, but relational DBs will remain the mainstay
Given strong SQL support on Hadoop, we'd nix the data warehouse
We're not interested in Hadoop
No opinion



Related Content

From Our Sponsor

Five Big Data Challenges and How to Overcome Them with Visual Analytics

Five Big Data Challenges and How to Overcome Them with Visual Analytics

Business leaders often need a visual snapshot of data to quickly grasp and use it. This paper identifies five challenges in presenting data and how visual analytics can resolve them. Solutions are suggested to overcome the challenges of: speed, data clarity, data quality, displaying meaningful results, and dealing with outliers.

Game-Changing Analytics: How IT Executives Can Use Analytics to Create Innovation and Business Success

Game-Changing Analytics: How IT Executives Can Use Analytics to Create Innovation and Business Success

Today's competitive advantage requires a deeper understanding of your business, your market and your customers. As an IT executive, you can drive that knowledge transformation. In this white paper, learn how to make decisions as a strategic business leader and three steps to begin an analytics initiative within your enterprise.

Data Visualization Techniques: From Basics to Big Data with SAS Visual Analytics

Data Visualization Techniques: From Basics to Big Data with SAS Visual Analytics

High-performance data visualization turns sophisticated analyses into meaningful graphics, leading to faster and smarter decision making. In this white paper, learn how visual analytics can transform big data, with additional features such as real-time functionality, mobile compatibility, robust applications for technical groups and accessibility for nontechnical users.

Big Data: Lessons from the Leaders

Big Data: Lessons from the Leaders

Financial performance, competitive advantage, operational efficiency, strategic decision making - every business goal can extract value from big data, and the time for doubt or inaction has long passed. In this Economist Intelligence Unit report, in-depth interviews with data pioneers reveal the link between the effective use of big data and the bottom line among other results.

Decision-Driven Data Management: A Strategy for Better Decisions with Better Data

Decision-Driven Data Management: A Strategy for Better Decisions with Better Data

Which came first, the data or the decision? This white paper makes the case for having a decision in mind, then tailoring big data's volume, variety and velocity to achieve business results such as overcoming customer dissatisfaction or creating well-informed strategies in real time.

Informationweek Reports

Research: The Big Data Management Challenge

Research: The Big Data Management Challenge

The challenge of big data is real, but most organizations don't differentiate 'big data' from traditional data, and nearly 90% of respondents to our survey use conventional databases as the primary means of handling data. We'll help you understand what constitutes big data (it's not just size) and the numerous management challenges it poses.