Fairly new U.S. pre-paid wireless carrier Ting will offer new customers up to a $350 credit per line for early termination fees to transfer to their network. Starting February 1st, they’ve allocated $100K to make this happen for the whole month. For those skeptical that this isn’t enough dinero, Ting responded to the Ars post where I first read about this saying:
Hi, Michael from Ting. I appreciate this thread. But I don’t get all the suspicion and concern about the numbers. At an average of about $200 an ETF, we’ll pay out about 500 users in the month. We’re doing it to see if these people go on to become good paying customers when their credits run out (and we should consider scaling out this deal) and, sure, to generate some buzz and get more people checking us out. Beyond those 500 customers, others will continue come to us every day who either are not under contract or choose to pay out their contract to start getting monthly savings sooner. It doesn’t make sense to suggest that our new subscribers in the month of February would suddenly be limited to those that participate in this promotion. And it doesn’t make sense to suggest that we shouldn’t help out ~500 people if we can’t help out absolutely everyone. It’s a nice little test and promotion and a bunch of people will be happy.
Ting is a Canadian company, but will operate in the U.S. It’s a Sprint MNVO similar to Boost or Virgin Mobile, which means doesn’t own the spectrum it operates under, but unlike Boost or Virgin though, Ting isn’t a subsidiary of Sprint. Most Android devices that work on Sprint or any of its MNVOs including devices with WiMAX or LTE (with the exception of Boost and Virgin devices) will work on Ting. If you’re a current customer on Sprint and would like to keep your number, you’ll need to port it to an non-activate Sprint phone or port it to a Ting phone that you can buy in their online store.
Trying not to sound like a shill for Ting, but this carrier seems great. They have an à la carte menu for minutes, messaging, and data. You pay for exactly what what you use.
You choose your plans for minutes, messages and megabytes. If you go over on any of them, we will reconcile in the next pay period so you pay for what you actually used (without penalty). Likewise, if you go under on any of them, we will credit you in the next pay period so you pay for what you actually used. Again, we will credit you.
They’re also Android only with a full support team and forums that tackle device and Android specific issues. That’s a first for a carrier. Regarding non-Android devices:
We’re big fans of Apple and all that they’ve accomplished with the iPhone. Perhaps one day we’ll be in a position to offer it to our customers but currently we have no plans to offer the iPhone.
As for Windows Phone, we like that OS and some of the hardware that runs it too. Again though, no current plans to offer it.
Source: Ars Technica
