Walmart To Offer iPhone 5 Off Contract, Unlimited Service For $45 Monthly

In what’s sure to be disruptive to carriers like AT&T and Verizon, Walmart is prepped to offer a no-contract option for Apple‘s iPhone 4 and iPhone 5, and they’re doing it at an incredibly affordable monthly cost.

Straight Talk, Walmart’s pre-paid cell phone service, is operated by TracFone Wireless Inc. and offers consumers no-contract monthly service for data, text, and talk. The catch, as with most pre-paid services, is the full priced upfront cost of the phone. In this case, Apple’s 8GB iPhone 4 will retail for $449, and the 16GB iPhone 5 for $649.

However, the monthly cost is where things get compelling: Just $45 for unlimited data, unlimited text, and unlimited voice. Crank the plan up to $60 per month and Straight Talk augments your service with unlimited international calling to more than 1,000 destinations in Mexico, Canada, India, and other countries. To put this in perspective, it’s $69.99 for just unlimited voice from AT&T.

What else makes this a big deal? Typically pre-paid vendors operate with an inventory of older phones (for example, Virgin Mobile just got Samsung’s Galaxy S II). The fact that Walmart will offer iPhone 5 — a device only 4 months old — without a contract could put the hurt on carriers like Verizon and AT&T.

When you do the comparative math, things get even more interesting. On AT&T, having an iPhone 5 with a 2 year contract and a plan supporting unlimited voice, unlimited text, and 5GB of data will cost consumers roughly $3550. With Straight Talk’s plan, cost of ownership over 2 years is only $1729, and that includes the full price of the iPhone 5.

This is indeed a game changer. The iPhone 4 and 5 prepaid plans will be available at Walmart at retail and online beginning tomorrow, January 11th 2013.

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