In 2008, Virgin Mobile bought Helio, another MVNO, and merged the two operations. It inherited Helio's all-in and a la carte contract plans as well as all the Helio handsets. Helio was a joint venture between U.S.-based Earthlink and Korea-based SK Telecom. Its target demographic skewed toward the young and upwardly mobile. Helio phones typically come with EV-DO support, GPS, and seamless integration with social networking services such as Facebook and MySpace.
Things you should know:
- As a CDMA carrier, international coverage is limited.
- There is no activation fee.
- It offers three payment options: Pay-as-you-go, monthly plans with no contract required, and monthly contract plans. The monthly contract plans are only for Helio phones.
- You have to pay $10 a month for unlimited text and messaging with a monthly no-contract plan. It's $20 a month if you have a pay-as-you-go plan.
- The Helio-only monthly contract plans are further divided into all-in plans and a la carte plans. All-in plans have unlimited features, and a la carte plans lets you choose which features you want.
- All Helio phones come with a standard array of features, which include EV-DO support, GPS, full HTML browsing, YouTube accessibility, and Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync support.
- Helio phones come with a GPS-based application called Buddy Beacon, Helio's friend-location service. The service lets you broadcast your location to your friends and vice versa.
- Some of Helio's 3G offerings include premium video content from content partners such as VH1 and Comedy Central. There's also Helio Music, Helio's over-the-air music download service.
- You can upload directly to Flickr and YouTube with Helio phones.
- Most Virgin Mobile phones (not Helio) are basic handsets aimed for budget-conscious consumers.
- All monthly plans include unlimited nights and weekends. Pay-as-you-go plans have rollover minutes.
- There are no roaming or long distance charges.
Fast facts:
- Subscribers: More than 5.3 million
- Coverage: Virgin Mobile has CDMA coverage in every state, similar to Sprint. Individual coverage will vary by location. For international coverage CDMA roaming is available in 26 countries.
- Technology: CDMA; 1xRTT
- 3G network: Yes, EV-DO
- Streaming video service: Yes
- Music download service: Yes
- Push-to-talk: No
- Prepaid plans: Yes
- Family plans: No
