Prepaid appears to be gaining some carrier cred again. After years of dismissing prepaid as a low-return, unreliable revenue source and making every effort to phase out their prepaid base, carriers may be changing their minds.

Nextel last week reported that Boost Mobile made its first operating profit in the first quarter, and more than a third of its 800,000 subscriber adds were prepaid customers. Now Cingular is reportedly diving back into prepaid, relaunching its own service under the old AT&T Wireless Go brand and making the prepaid option available over its entire portfolio.

So what's the deal? Certainly prepaid didn't just suddenly become more profitable. Perhaps it's a growing awareness that companies like Boost and Virgin Mobile have a broader potential audience than expected or the success exhibited by resellers and MVNO targeting specific minority groups. Verizon Wireless and Cingular even seem to be changing the traditional notion of prepaid, offering what looks similar to a bucket minute plan with the perks of night and weekend calling for a set monthly price. The difference is the customer pays at the beginning of each billing cycle, not at the end.

Whether those plans will be attractive to anyone except the extremely credit challenged remains to be seen. What's certain is that prepaid doesn't seem to have the stigma it once had, and carriers aren't approaching the market as merely a way to move customers onto a post-paid plan.

E-mail me at kfitchard@primediabusiness.com.