Yes, I’m sure many of you were unaware that Sprint owned Virgin Mobile (the Boost Mobile was a dead giveaway though) along with other companies specializing in pre-paid wireless services. What they’ve done is restructure them to give the consumer 4 different options to what they need as well as more bang for their buck. The pre-paid rates are as follows:
- Virgin Mobile USA: Sprint says that Virgin Mobile will serve as its high-end pre-paid service, and it will offer advanced devices with plans that place more emphasis on texting and web use rather than voice use. Starting May 12, $25 will get users unlimited messaging, email, data and web with 300 minutes per month. The $40 plan bumps the minutes offered up to 1,200, and $60 per month buys unlimited everything. The plans are called “Beyond Talk.” Users will be able to add BlackBerry services to any of these plans for just $10 more per month. Virgin’s Broadband2Go will still fall under this set of plans. It provides no-contract wireless broadband for devices such as laptops. Sprint indicated that Broadband2Go could take advantage of “4G” services at some point, though Sprint didn’t specifically say WiMax.
- Boost Mobile: Boost will focus more on talking and texting. The $50 unlimited plan provides unlimited talk, text, web, 411, email and IM. New handsets being offered by Boost include the Samsung Rant, and Kyocera Incognito, Mirro SCP3810 and Juno. These are all CDMA phones. Boost will also continue to offer iDEN devices and services.
- Assurance Wireless: This service, launched earlier this year, is a free service provided to low-income households across the U.S. Qualifying citizens receive a free cell phone and 200 free minutes of airtime for local and long-distance calling per month.
- Common Cents Mobile: Last, Sprint is launching a very inexpensive plan that lets users pay by the minute. Users will pay $0.07 per minute of voice use, and $0.07 per text message sent. Simple phones, such as the LG 101, Samsung M340, and Kyocera S2300 are available from Common Cents.
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