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Over the past 9 months, TrapCall has received thousands of emails, tweets, Facebook posts, blog comments and phone calls requesting that TrapCall add support for Sprint. It was kind of a sore subject for us. But, truth be told, we love Sprint. Their wireless data network is great. However, one policy at Sprint had caused major roadblocks for TrapCall and the likelihood of TrapCall coming to Sprint….until Sprint dropped some great news on us this week!

Sprint currently charges 20 cents per minute, on top of airtime charges, for conditional call forwarding, which is the backbone of TrapCall’s service. This means that every unanswered, busy or rejected call sent to TrapCall and then sent back to your phone or your phone’s voicemail, costs 20 cents per minute. We felt it was in our best interest not to subject Sprint users to these charges, especially when most Sprint customers are unaware of these charges! You would be surprised at how many minutes per month a typical user ends up conditionally call forwarding once the service is activated. The charges can add up fast.

The worst part of all was that Sprint was the only large carrier with this policy. Most mobile carriers like conditional call forwarding. Why? Because it essentially creates two phone calls, allowing the carrier to charge double airtime minutes for these calls.

But things are changing fast at Sprint. Today, Sprint announced its “Open” approach to encourage mobile applications developers to take advantage of Sprints voice, data and messaging capabilities. After months and months, Sprint has finally listened to TrapCall and announced that they will be lifting the per-minute fees for conditional call forwarding beginning mid-November. A major win for TrapCall users!

Sprint issued a press release this afternoon stating, “Application developers have created a number of voicemail and messaging services that take advantage of call forwarding capabilities. Sprint announced today that it will not charge customers for certain types of call forwarding. Conditional call forwarding for busy calls or calls not answered using the customer’s wireless phone will be free, beginning mid-November.” No longer will users have to migrate away from Sprint to take advantage of TrapCall’s Caller ID unmasking, which we have seen in large numbers since launching TrapCall earlier this year.

Kudos, Sprint!

Starting in mid-November when Sprint’s new policies go into effect, TrapCall will begin testing Sprint’s network and its voice messaging compatibility with TrapCall. We’ll also be working to roll out support for Google Voice, so users can enjoy the benefits of both services at once, something we’re really excited about! (Google also recently announced they would begin supporting conditional call forwarding!)

So for all you Sprint users out there who are anxious to sign up for TrapCall, keep your fingers crossed that Sprint makes good on their promises to developers. Keep checking TrapCall’s blog, Facebook or Twitter for the latest updates. We promise you’ll be the first to know when TrapCall and Sprint play nice together, finally. We can’t wait to have you Sprint users onboard!