Prepaid Cards a New Way to Pay the Toll on Information Highway
Per-minute Internet access, vanquished by the overwhelming success of unlimited-use pricing plans, is making a comeback of sorts in the form of prepaid Internet cards.
Sprint this month will begin selling prepaid Internet access cards that function much like prepaid phone cards, with the user paying in advance for a set amount of online time through a nationwide toll-free number or a list of local access numbers.
Like the phone cards, Sprint’s prepaid service deducts time from the card’s balance with each use until the allotment is depleted or expires--typically 12 to 15 months after purchase. Users can track their balance and buy more time through a Sprint Web site.
Sprint plans to sell the cards through large retailers, including drugstores, college bookstores and office supply and convenience stores--all places where prepaid phone cards have sold well.
The cards will come in denominations of 3 hours, 5 hours or 6 hours, with each card’s price set by the retailer. Sprint said it expects stores to sell the cards for about $10, $20 and $25, respectively.
At those prices, it would be foolish for most Internet users to ditch their unlimited-use plans. With access costing from 5 cents to 7 cents per minute for Sprint’s prepaid service, any user averaging more than 6 minutes per day on the Internet is better off with a monthly-fee service such as CompuServe’s $9.95 plan--with 20 hours of usage each month--or the standard $20 to $22 unlimited-use rates from America Online, EarthLink and others.
By some estimates, the average home Internet user spends about 10 hours online a month, costing about $2 an hour for people on a $20 monthly service plan.
Low-level users also have the option of free Internet service from companies such as NetZero, which bombard users with ads to pay the bills. But it’s unclear how long the free-service option will last since free-Internet company Freei fell into bankruptcy and NetZero announced plans to start charging customers who are online more than 40 hours each month.
But don’t write off the prepaid idea altogether. Just as there are many uses for prepaid phone cards despite their generally higher prices, there are times and places tailor-made for prepaid Internet services too.
Consider the benefits of prepaid accounts: no monthly fees, no contract or service agreement, no long-distance charges and no credit checks or automatic credit card charges.
To use the service, you need access to a computer with a dial-up modem and a Web browser, such as Netscape or Internet Explorer. Because the prepaid access number is toll-free, any phone line works with the service, including pay phones and hotel phones. An e-mail account is included.
For vacationers or business travelers, prepaid Internet service can supply the basics of Web access in places where national Internet providers don’t have local access numbers or where finding the right access number is a hassle. Or it can act as an emergency backup for times when a corporate system or primary Web access is inaccessible.
Home users who connect to the Internet through cable modems or digital subscriber line (DSL) technology could keep a prepaid card handy for times when the fast-access services go down.
The prepaid model is also a good option for users who merely dabble with the Web and e-mail, making monthly-fee plans a waste of money. Parents could also use the prepaid option to keep a cap on the time their children spend online.
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Times staff writer Elizabeth Douglass covers telecommunications.
