Kevin Cooper, Wireless category manager for retail services, 7-Eleven

Kevin Cooper seems almost too young to be running his own wireless carrier. It's not his carrier per se — it actually belongs to retail giant 7-Eleven — but Cooper is directing the nationwide launch of prepaid wireless services in more than 5000 convenience stores across the country. He may eventually supervise an international deployment that could cover potentially 26,000 locations worldwide. Not bad for a guy who isn't yet on the heels of 30.

Cooper's youth, however, brings some young ideas to the retailing giant. Not only is 7-Eleven the first retailer to launch an mobile virtual network operator in the U.S., it's also bringing the idea of “convenience” to the wireless business. 7-Eleven is offering a prepaid service that is literally ready to use as soon as you step out of the store. The batteries are charged, the phone pre-assigned and $10 worth of minutes are already pre-loaded into the service.

“They can dial a number as soon as they get into the parking lot,” Cooper said. “And from that point on they're just buying raw minutes.”

As simple as it sounds to the customer, the back end is a bit more complicated. Ztar Mobile supplies the back office, customer management and service plans; Cingular Wireless resells its TDMA network minutes; Nokia supplies the handsets; and 7-Eleven markets, distributes and sells the service at its franchises. After testing the Speak Out service in 250 stores in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, 7-Eleven launched it commercially in 14 markets in May. Cooper plans to take the service nationwide later this summer, coinciding with Cingular's transition from TDMA to GSM networks.

The international plans are still up in the air, but considering the prepaid demand of the European, Latin American and Asian countries where 7-Eleven currently does business, it's more a question of when than if.

Basically, Cooper said, 7-Eleven thinks there's a business in prepaid services, but it's not the kind of service that national carriers like Verizon Wireless, Cingular and Sprint envision. While those carriers want to attract, keep and upsell a customer for the long haul, Cooper is approaching the business more along the lines of selling a Slurpee. Sure, you want to keep the customer happy and have him coming back for more, but at the end of the day you've still made your money on each Slurpee. Pricing is set at a flat rate of 20¢ per minute, including long-distance and national roaming. The phones come in at $50 to $90 after rebate. And customers can carry a balance of minutes indefinitely as long as they add minutes at least once every four months.

“The bottom line is, we're happy to keep these customers as prepaid customers,” Cooper said. “We're not looking to convert anyone to post-paid, and we're not churning people off our networks. Customers can maintain wireless service for $75 a year,” Cooper said. “That fits a lot of people's budgets.”