You may have heard about a newcomer to the prepaid/postpaid market called
Madstar Mobile. Launched on Halloween, it is still in the early setup stages and much of their website is nonfunctional and empty. But, after communicating with their customer service representatives and digging through what information IS available, I found some preliminary details. Keep in mind this is just the soft launch information, so some of this will likely change.
From what I could gather, Madstar Mobile will be offering both prepaid no-contract and postpaid contract plans. They offer phone financing, similar to the monthly payment plans that the large carriers have set up, as well as ETF reimbursement to get out of postpaid contracts. However, if you qualify for an ETF, then you are required to sign a contract with Madstar (which sort of makes breaking the other contract pointless…).
Here are the plans listed
on their website:
- $22 Smart Starter Plan – 250 minutes, 250 text
- $33 Neptune Plan – 1000 minutes, 1000 text
- $44 Andromeda Plan – 500 minutes, 500 text, 512 MB data
- $55 Jupiter Plan – unlimited minutes, unlimited text, no data
- $66 Celebrity Plan – 1000 minutes, 1000 text, 1 GB data
- $88 Pluto Plan – unlimited minutes, unlimited text, 2 GBdata
Three data-only plans designed for tablets and the like were recently posted on their site as well:
- $22 – 512 MB
- $33 – 1 GB
- $44 – 2 GB
Madstar has a small selection of phones and other devices on their website, but they are all extremely high priced. They offer BYOD, but that page is unfortunately one of the nonfunctional pages, so I don’t really have any information. Madstar uses Sprint’s nationwide network, likely with the prepaid coverage map.
I admit I have my doubts about this company, as it doesn’t really seem to have it all together and is far from professional as far as marketing and responding to inquiries for information (Just try and read through the Description on
their Facebook page. I dare you). However, it might simply be growing pains experienced by a new company trying something a little unusual for an MVNO. Only time will tell.]]>
