Ampd Still Hanging On; Prexar Buys Access to Customers
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Richard Baguley Published on August 02, 2007 Comment on this |
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2nd August 2007 - The death throes of the MVNO Amp'd aren't over yet: two days after the company was supposed to finally shut down, the service is still running, thanks to a last minute agreement with another MVNO called Prexar. They have bought the right to market to the remaining customers of Amp'd, and are trying to persuade post-paid users to switch over to their service. Under the terms of the bankruptcy agreement, this gives users a couple more days of grace, with the new deadline for disconnection now set at 12:01 PM EST on the 2nd of August. Prexar is a small MVNO (mobile virtual network operator, a company that resells access to another network) who resells access to Verizon. According to paperwork filed with the bankruptcy court, they have bought the right to "market to the Debtor's customers (the 'End Users') the provision of service to the End Users to the extent such End Users desire to purchase service through Prexar...". Picking apart the legal language, this means that Prexar has bought the right to market their services to the remaining Amp'd customers as an alternative, with the exception of the E816 Motorola handset that some customers use. This is an interesting move; it means that Prexar can try and pick up Amp'd users, but that they aren't responsible for Ampd's bills.
In return, Prexar has to pay a fee to Amp'd for every customer that transfers over to their service; $10 a month for plans that cost between $51 and $90 a month, and $20 per month for those over $91. This agreement runs for up to 24 months, and Prexar also has to pay a percentage of the net income from the new accounts it gets from transferring Amp'd customers.
Prexar is a small MVNO, and they seem to be specifically targeting the monthly subscribers of Amp'd; their Web site claims that they aren't offering pre-paid services, and that pre-paid suers of Amp'd can't transfer their numbers to Prexar. Monthly subscribers can, however, and Prexar claims that they can keep using the Amp'd handsets. Although Both Sprint and Verizon told us that they would not be allowing Amp'd users to connect their handsets to their networks, we have been told by several former Amp'd users that they were able to connect their Amp'd handsets to a Verizon prepaid service.
[Tombstone courtesy of J J Chandler's Tombstone Generator]
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