New Flat-Rate Push-to-Talk and Unlimited Text/Web Plans from Sprint

By Contributor Wireless and Mobile News on January 22, 2009 11:36 AM

Sprint is offering a new group of flat-rate plans for Nextel Direct Connect. The new plans include unlimited Direct Connect, Group Connect, Mobile-to-Mobile, Text Messaging and Picture Mail, starting at $29.99 per month. These plans are supposed to save businesses money because the offer unlimited connections within the employee workgroups saving more costly pay per minute phone use.

Their news release notes that with other mobile providers, a business is asked to choose a plan based on monthly anytime voice minutes required per user and then pay incrementally for features such as push-to-talk, text messaging and picture mail. While this approach makes sense for consumers, businesses use mobile communications tools differently and need plans to address the fact that most communication occurs between workgroup members.

With Nextel Direct Connect Custom Plans, the focus is on key services used most by workgroups, which are bundled with unlimited usage, at a low flat monthly rate. A business can then attach a bucket of anytime voice minutes to be shared with the entire workgroup.

Specifically, businesses can choose from the following Nextel Direct Connect Custom Plans:

Unlimited Workgroup Communications -- with unlimited Direct Connect and Group Connect plus unlimited text messaging, mobile-to-mobile minutes and night and weekend minutes starting at 9 p.m.
- $29.99 per month per line.
Web & Navigation -- includes the above features, plus unlimited data, Web browsing and GPS navigation
- $39.99 per month per line for Nextel phones.
- $49.99 per month per line for PowerSource and Nextel Direct Connect capable Sprint phones.
Pooled voice minutes can be added to either plan for the group to share
- 500 minutes for $30 per month per line.
- Or 2,000 minutes for $100 per month per line.

"This is a paradigm shift in how businesses select a wireless plan to meet their business's needs," said Danny Bowman, president of Nextel Direct Connect, Sprint. "We wanted to deliver more value to our customers and offer Nextel Direct Connect Custom Plans for businesses that wish to control costs without limiting communication. With unlimited Nextel Direct Connect in every plan, businesses have a powerful communication tool at their disposal at a predictable price. We also don't limit how anytime minutes are shared and customers have the flexibility to add minutes as their business needs require."