Consumers are the winners as wireless plans get cheaper

— -- Sprint Nextel s and Verizon vz are rolling out new, more consumer-friendly calling plans, reflecting the hyper-competitive state of wireless.

Starting Monday, Sprint will begin offering a new "share" plan that offers 3,000 voice minutes and a bounty of add-ons for $169.99 a month for two lines. Additional lines cost $19.99 each.

In addition to the 50 hours of calling time, subscribers will receive: unlimited messaging and e-mail, unlimited access to the mobile Web, 50 streaming music channels, 25-plus live TV channels, on-demand TV — clips as well as full-length TV shows — and unlimited GPS navigation. For sports fans, there's also unlimited access to NFL Mobile and NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile. BlackBerry users also qualify for this plan.

Cheaper plans with fewer services start at $69.99 a month. Depending on the plan, lines can be added for as little as $9.99 a month.

For a family of three, the $169.99 plan represents a $45 savings off Sprint's prior plans, says Walter Piecyk, a telecom analyst at Pali Research. The savings is $60 compared with Verizon and $45 compared with AT&T wireless. The latter don't offer GPS navigation or BlackBerry options, he notes.

With prices for gas, food and other necessities rising, Piecyk says Sprint's approach is pitch-perfect.

"If you can save somebody $50 to $60 on a rate plan, they're going to switch," he predicts.

Sprint has been struggling with a string of operational problems related to the Nextel merger. Piecyk says most consumers don't care about that — but they do care an awful lot about saving money.

"If you cut the price enough, that moves customers," he says.

Verizon, on the cusp of becoming the USA's No. 1 wireless carrier, thanks to its proposed acquisition of Alltel, is also turning up the marketing heat.

Next week, Verizon plans to start offering discounts of $8 to $21 a month to people who buy wireless services plus any other service, such as advanced cable TV, marketed as FiOS — short for Fiber-Optic Services — or high-speed broadband. Previously, consumers had to buy a traditional landline service to qualify for a discount. The more services you buy, the bigger the discount.

AT&T, currently the No. 1 wireless carrier, already offers such discounts. No. 3 Sprint sold its landline business when it merged with Nextel.

Piecyk says carriers with big landline businesses — such as Verizon and AT&T — are basically stuck. If they make it easy and financially attractive to dump landlines, they help speed up erosion of that 100-year-old business. "But if they don't, they just lose customers," he says.

Despite its old-fashioned profile, the landline business is still a moneymaker that generates billions of dollars in cash each year. But the business is shrinking rapidly, thanks to the fast rise of wireless, which is quickly becoming a replacement for landline service.

Verizon concedes as much, noting that a recent Harris Interactive poll showed that 89% of U.S. adults have a cellphone. Of that number, 14% "report using only their cellphones for voice service," Verizon says. And that number is rising every year.

In anticipation of the shift, AT&T and Verizon have been spending billions to construct advanced video networks and shore up wireless across the USA.