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Amazon could be gearing up to offer “Prime Wireless.”
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The low-cost cell phone plan could help Amazon boost its Prime subscribers, Bloomberg reports.
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Amazon is reportedly talking to T-Mobile, Verizon, and Dish about the idea.
Amazon may soon be dangling yet another perk in front of prospective Prime members: the chance to save big on your monthly cell phone bill.
The company is in talks with wireless carriers about potentially offering a Prime Wireless plan that could range from $0 to $10 per month for Amazon Prime members, Bloomberg reported on Friday. T-Mobile, Verizon, and Dish have all been involved in the talks, according to the report, though the idea could take months to launch and could still fail to pan out.
“We are always exploring adding even more benefits for Prime members, but don’t have plans to add wireless at this time,” Amazon spokesperson Bradley Mattinger told Insider in a statement.
“Amazon is a great partner to T-Mobile in many areas, and we are always interested in working more closely with our cross-town neighbors in new ways,” a T-Mobile spokesperson told Insider. “However, we are not in discussions about inclusion of our wireless in Prime service, and Amazon has told us they have no plans to add wireless service.”
If such a service does end up launching, it would be a significant development in the wireless industry. Amazon is a known disrupter with the patience and ability to spend vast amounts of money to gain market share, and wireless carriers will have to weigh the potential size of such a deal and the chance of growing their customer base with the possible risk of helping establish an eventual competitor.
For Amazon, it’s all about juicing Prime membership numbers and keeping existing subscribers further locked in with meaningful perks. That lock-in is especially important if the company were to raise the price of Prime, which it did in 2022, increasing the annual subscription from $119 to $139.
But a low-cost cell phone from Amazon could prove tempting.
Even at $10 a month, a Prime Wireless plan would represent real savings for most people. The average American pays $144 per month for their phone bill, JD Power told CNBC.
According to Bloomberg’s report, Amazon is in discussions with wireless carriers to piggyback off their network as a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) to save on infrastructure-building costs. MVNOs offer more affordable plans — the average phone bill in the US for an MVNO subscriber is $77, per JD Power, and no-frills, low-cost plans around $15 do exist.
Dish and Verizon did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
This is far from Amazon’s first foray into the wireless market. Amazon famously launched the Fire phone nearly a decade ago in an exclusive arrangement with AT&T. The product flopped, with then-CEO Jeff Bezos calling the product in a 2018 letter to shareholders “a failure” that helped “accelerate our efforts building Echo and Alexa.”
Read the original article on Business Insider
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