The Battle of the Prepaid cellular prices continues

Wal-Mart is getting in on the prepaid craze. With AT&T offering a unlimited talk and text plan for $60 per month, someone had to come around and step up their game.

Wal-Mart is starting up it’s own “Straight Talk” service that will ride off of TracFone’s service. The service starts at just $30 per month and a user can get unlimited talk, text AND DATA for $45 per month.

The service goes on sale starting October 18th. It will offer not only nationwide coverage, but it will also offer unlimited 411 usage.

Of course, like most other prepaid carriers, the phone options will be quite limited. You won’t see any cutting edge phones avaiable for purchase on any of these types of services. That probably has something to do with how cheap the plans plus data are. If everyone had an iPhone or another more advanced phone on the plan, then it would eat data and Wal-Mart would likely be losing money. However, with the not-as-advanced phones, these are great options for text-happy teenagers.

With prepaid plans like these popping up, I can definitely see post paid plans taking a hit. These aren’t just regional plans, they are nationwide plans with great coverage. For example AT&T is one of the only carriers that have coverage at my parent’s house in rural Mississippi. I was completely in the dark when I had T-Mobile and went to visit them.

I would like to see more competition with post-paid plans because that’s where the more desirable phones are. That’s what I’m after in the end…I want good coverage and a great phone for a reasonable price. That’s why I’m with Sprint. The price really overcame the company’s phone selection and the coverage is awesome when compared to the T-Mobile phone I had previously.

Would you switch from your post paid plan to a prepaid plan to get in on the deals? How about you prepaid plan people…How do you like your service? How much does a more advanced phone matter to you?