Verizon gives a few more clues about Tracfone acquisition

For years, Verizon appeared to bend over backwards to avoid the prepaid wireless segment, where service plans traditionally targeted the cheaper end of the market and customer turnover runs higher. But with the nearly $7 billion agreement to buy prepaid leader Tracfone from América Móvil, Verizon is jumping in with both feet. It’s a big change in strategy that certainly drew the attention of Wall Street analysts. Executives like to point out that of Tracfone’s 21 million customers, about 13 million of them already use the Verizon network today under the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) agreement. “But there's 8 or 9 million that ride on competitor networks and we have the opportunity to migrate those across to be on to Verizon,” said Ronan Dunne, CEO of the Consumer Group at Verizon. “So enhance the owner's economics and with the tools as I say, the CRM and base management and distribution tools, which we believe will allow us to be highly cost-effective in that segment.”