Posted on 02/14/2011 12:28:10 PM PST by Slyscribe
Can government subsidies help Sprint Nextel (S) bounce back? Perhaps so, in a way you may not think.
Sprint, which reported fourth-quarter earnings on Thursday, seems to be having success with its Assurance Wireless brand, a prepaid offering. Sprint launched the government-subsidized Assurance program in early 2010. Sprint now markets the Assurance brand in 22 states and Washington, D.C.
Sprint expanded the Assurance brand to Pennsylvania today.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.investors.com ...
How do you get these food stamps. I want them......I don’t care that I have a job and make way over the limit. Even with four children and a wife, we don’t qualify. 7800 is too much supposedly....huh!!!
I am just kidding....it was sarcasm at it’s worse.
They must make some money from the people who go over the free minutes, but it still made me sick when I see the commercials on TV.
Any cell phone, even the old ones, will call 911 if you have an emergency. As far as I’m concerned that should be good enough for the freeloaders.
Then they just call 911 every time McDonald’s is out of nuggets.
...and you pay for ambulance roll.
Just send them some string, we already paid for the damn cans...
Don’t forget the “food stamp restaurant meals program” where YOU pay for someone else to go out to eat!
Fun, huh?
I can barely afford my cellphone...and here I am subsidizing cell phones for those whose main occupation is to have loose sex and get pregnant
Moochelle’s “Let’s MOVE” (into MrB’s house)
Playing devil’s advocate for a moment. I was once in a position where I was very poor and had a small child. My husband was only working a couple of days a week in temp positions. We had no phone. (This was back before everyone had cells). It was very hard to find a job if people couldn’t call you. Things eventually got better for us but it would have been great to have a phone at that time. Please try not to be so judgmental or lump everyone into the same category. Some people truly need help to pull themselves back up. And surely the people getting food stamps these days (record numbers) are not all good-for-nothing bums. Life is very hard for a lot of people these days.
Here you go...job the system and get yo free phone
https://www.safelinkwireless.com/EnrollmentPublic/home.aspx
I have been there a few times in this life too, and a helping hand up is just fine with me if someone needs it. My point is no one NEEDS a cell phone. What did our parents do when they couldn’t pay the phone bill? They adapted and did just fine without it. For the first time in my life I had to claim unemployment last year, it was either that or get behind on the house payment so I filed. We could have gotten all kinds of assistance on top of that I bet, but I never checked into it because with what my wife brings home he could just paddle with our heads above water if nothing serious happened. I was ashamed enough that I couldn’t find work that I drove across town to deposit the balance on my card into my checking account rather than look the tellers I was on a first name basis on in the eye each month when the house payment came due. I am sorry, but enough is enough, I don’t have a cell phone but I have an old one charged in my car with no service in case I have to call 911. As I said, helping someone with a hand up is one thing, but using tax dollars to give them a portable phone for convenience is just too much to me.
Off that site:
Thanks to SafeLink, Lifeline support is now available for wireless phones. Traditionally, the Lifeline program was only available as a discount on a consumers landline telephone bill. SafeLink Wireless was created by TracFone Wireless, Inc. when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently approved the company to offer Lifeline — a public assistance program that ensures telephone service is available and affordable for low-income subscribers. SafeLink Wireless applies the Universal Service Fund subsidy to an allotment of free airtime minutes and TracFone provides the wireless handset at the companys expense. Instead of receiving a subsidized monthly telephone bill for Lifeline service, SafeLink converts the total amount of discounted service into minutes each month for one year. The cell phone offers in-demand features: voicemail, text, three-way calling, call waiting, caller ID and access to 911.
SafeLink phones are not paid for by taxpayers or the federal government. TracFone Wireless pays for the phones and also the cost of promoting its SafeLink program to make sure that eligible consumers know about the program.
Have to dig deeper, but if it isn’t subsidized then perhaps its not as bad as I had thought.
My daughter is a social worker,, her clients do not want the free wireless.. no texting, too few minutes plain phones etc.. instead all these folks have I phones ... they may live in the ghetto..but they have 50 inch TVs , laptops, wireless and I phones ... makes her sick
Yep. I remember seeing TV ads for this...you know that those aren’t free to produce either.
Why not simply have them buy a phone that you cna purchase minutes for? I’m on SSD and I bought one for twenty dollars at a grocery store and have been using it since.
For the life of me, I am amazed that your daughter hasn’t lost faith in humanity.
Well then they need to go to their family, their friends and neighbors, a local church....and ASK FOR IT.
Not steal it from me at the point of a gun.
Welfare is a Satanic perversion of charity. That you would even try to conflate the two is repugnant.
Well, I hope you never need help.
I wouldn't even know where to go to get expropriated govt freebies.
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