www.WirelessFederation.com/news: New brands and plans have been rolled out by Sprint Nextel, not to forget its partnership with Wal-Mart Stores Inc. that will charge seven cents per minute or text message. Sprint is not the only operator moving aggressively into the low end of the cell phone market. Almost all the big U.S. wireless carriers are risking profits for growth by selling services to consumers without requiring them to sign contracts.

Even Verizon wireless avoiding the prepaid market for long, has opened its nationwide network to prepaid resellers and has accounted for nearly half of the industry’s prepaid subscriber additions. As the big players have started moving into the prepaid environment, smaller players like MetroPCS Communications Inc. and Leap Wireless International Inc., which combined have 12.4 million customers, have been pressurized to slash prices and explore a merger.

The prepaid option gained popularity during the recession as lost jobs and cut wages meant people couldn’t commit to signing multiyear contracts. Cheaper rates, no contracts and no termination fees comes as a bait while access to the most advanced phones and the subsidies that make them affordable have to be relinquished by the subscribers.

Out of every five Americans, one is with a cell phone that had a prepaid plan at the end of 2009, compared with 15% in 2007. In some markets, up to 30% of subscribers are on prepaid plans. Prepaid customers bringing in less money every month is one of the major risks in providing prepaid services. There is also no guarantee whether they’ll stick around before jumping to another company. But at the same time prepaid customers pay higher upfront prices for phones, since there are no carrier subsidies.