Does the brand HELIO sound familiar at all? I remember it fondly. I can still picture the kiosks inside malls, where, more often than not, an employee would try to convince anyone walking by that switching to the MVNO, and away from their carrier, was a good idea. The pitch had to be quick, of course, because people in malls tend to have a place they want to be — and if it wasn’t the HELIO kiosk, that usually meant walking faster when the pitch started.
(Also, fun fact: HELIO came back in 2015!)
Back then, and leading up to that point, prepaid options weren’t necessarily the best. Even when it was offered by huge carriers like AT&T and Verizon, the service wasn’t nearly as good, the phones were sometimes downright terrible, and just about anything else important was barely good enough. Prepaid carriers weren’t nearly as prominent in the mobile space as they are now.
Just a few days ago I watched a very loud commercial for Verizon Wireless promoting its prepaid option, and I sat there for awhile after it ended trying to think if I had seen anything like that before, aside from an MVNO’s own commercial. If I have, I don’t remember it.
But things have changed in a big way. Prepaid options are a lot better than they used to be, and while people still have to buy their phones without any kind of help from the carrier, be it an up-front subsidy or monthly payment arrangements, the options are way better than they ever were back then. And the network supports the prepaid option, too. And from MVNOs there’s network coverage there, too.
A lot of prepaid plans actually offer unlimited everything, too, which is a stark contrast to how the much bigger postpaid options are handling things. Of course, those postpaid carriers have way more phones on their network, so the differences are probably perfectly acceptable. The real point here is that prepaid options aren’t being stingy with what they’re offering, especially when they’re monthly payments are low, too.
After seeing Verizon’s commercial, I couldn’t help but start wondering if this was something a growing number of people were considering. And, more than that, actually switching to. Have you gone with a prepaid plan instead of a postpaid plan? If so, what made you want to go that route? How much money are you saving every month? Let me know!
