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Europe has got very used to aggressive price wars between cellcos luring subscribers with flat rate voice and data plans, and now the trend is starting to come to America in earnest as well. Shares in flat rate carriers MetroPCS and Leap Wireless slumped on news that Sprint's Boost Mobile subsidiary, which targets younger subscribers, was launching an unlimited voice/data plan for $50 a month.

Boost could spark a major price war at the lower end of the market and even reignite talks of Leap and MetroPCS merging - though the two regional operators did achieve near national coverage last year through a roaming agreement. Boost, formerly an internal MVNO set up by Nextel, has a significant advantage over rivals - huge excess capacity on Nextel's iDEN network, which has seen users defecting in droves since the company merged with Sprint.

Although there have been performance and service issues with the once-excellent iDEN system, it will certainly be well up to the job of delivering low cost voice and internet, reducing Sprint's wasted capacity and, since it decided last fall not to sell off iDEN, turning what could have been a white elephant to competitive advantage. Sprint has already led the way with low cost data plans on its CDMA network, geared to higher end power users - notably the Simply Everything plan at $99 a month - but has consistently been matched by Verizon and AT&T, with their greater flexibility in terms of 3G availability, cashflow and margins.

The new Boost offering is in a different category though, and should be music to the ears of Motorola, which is the exclusive supplier of infrastructure and iDEN or dual-mode handsets. The new plan is available from Thursday, and includes voice, text messaging, mobile web access and Nextel's famous push-to-talk service.

Leap's Cricket Wireless service offers a $45 per month option for unlimited voice and text, and MetroPCS provides unlimited calling, text and web access for $50, but despite their roaming agreement, the two companies have less coverage and brand awareness than Sprint/Boost. Users will now be waiting to see whether Boost will be seen as a threat to AT&T and Verizon, and whether those giants will follow suit with $50 offers.

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