Virgin Mobile Deals A Musical 'Wild Card' Cell Phone

The MNVO's latest handset is a refined version of the Switch Back, an e-mail and text messaging phone that Virgin Mobile introduced last year.

Virgin Mobile USA on Friday unveiled "Wild Card" by Kyocera Wireless, which is the carrier's first cell phone with streaming music capability.

While carriers in the United States offer the option to get pre-paid services on phones, Virgin Mobile's business model (Mobile Network Virtual Operator or MNVO) is entirely based on providing plans without annual contracts ranging from pre-paid to pay-as-you-go services.

The carrier's new Wild Card phone, weighing around 4 ounces, is intended for multimedia and Web browsing. At first glance Wild Card's front face looks like a typical cell phone with a dial pad and other options for voice calls. It can also be tuned sideways and flipped open revealing a wide screen with speakers and a full QWERTY keyboard.

"This is another Virgin Mobile phone that appeals to so many of our customers' interests -- especially those who love to text and listen to music," said Howard Handler, the company's CFO, in a statement.

Wild Card is the refined version of Virgin Mobile's Switch Back, an e-mail and text messaging phone that was introduced last year.

Wild Card streams music through an application called Headliner, which works like a jukebox and lets customers listen to individual tracks for 25 cents each. Additionally, the subscription service serves up concert tour updates, music news, artist information, and music charts. Headliner costs $2.49 a month.

The music service is paired with a messaging offer, which includes unlimited text, IM, e-mail, and picture messaging for $20 a month.

Wild Card comes with an optional service called "Contact Vault" for customers that want to store, retrieve, and transfer their personal contacts list if their phone is lost or if they upgrade to a new phone. Contact Vault costs $2 a month or $10 for six months.

The phone costs $100 and is available at Best Buy, Radio Shack, Target, and Wal-Mart. It will be available for purchase on Virgin Mobile's Web site starting next week.

Virgin Mobile announces Super Slice phone with Bluetooth support

Virgin Mobile USA just announced its new candybar-shaped phone Super Slice. The successor to the last year’s Slice model is the first phone offered by the MVNO which comes with the Bluetooth connectivity support. In addition to that, the UTStarcom-manufactured 10.2 mm thick Super Slice also comes with the VGA camera, speakerphone, new UI and the battery that promises to support up to 270 minutes of talk time. Naturally, being the prepaid carrier, Virgin Mobile USA is offering the Super Slice sans any contract and you can get it for $59.99 within a week or so.

LG Aloha, Virgin Mobile’s first LG Wi-Fi handset Introduced

Virgin Mobile USA and LG Electronics has teamed up to launch LG Aloha mobile phone.

With this announcement, Aloha is stated to be the first mobile device from LG to carry a pre-paid Virgin Mobile lineup in the US. The clamshell delivers 65k internal color screen with conventional keyboard.

The sleek wireless Aloha is 3.5-inch long and 1.9-inch wide with 0.9-inch thickness. LG Aloha has the capacity to store 199 contacts. Users can also add five numbers, three e-mail addresses and one URL for each of the contacts saved.

In addition, it features real music playback, animated ring tones, speakerphone and voice-activated dialing. It also comes with pre-loaded games such as ZooZoo Club and battle Reversi.

LG provides a battery that offers 180 minutes of talk time and 150 hours of standby time. It also features Virgin Mobile’s new dynamic and intuitive graphic user interface.

Virgin Mobile LG Aloha handset is slated to be out in stores by September 2007, with the price tag of $34.99 (approx. Rs. 1400).

Virgin Mobile and its charitable partners have auctioned the Aloha through The RE*Generation to help young people at-risk and alone on the streets.

Virgin joins high-speed race

OPTUS' Virgin Mobile is the latest carrier to take a tilt at the burgeoning mobile broadband market, becoming the first to combine voice and internet access in a single price package delivered over a 3G network.

A "virtual" operator using the Optus 3G network, Virgin will today announce two Virgin Broadband plans, with one aimed at home users and one at mobile users with laptops.

Virgin is promising a deluge of advertising to support the launch, which it says will be the largest since the brand kicked off in Australia. But for once, the announcement will not be accompanied by a trademark media stunt by Sir Richard Branson, Virgin Mobile chief executive Matt Davey said.

"We are a little bit more mature and I don't think we need to launch with a huge stunt. This will speak for itself," Mr Davey said.

The Virgin offer is the latest in a spate of affordable mobile-based internet services designed to tempt customers away from fixed-line broadband.

The new "At home" product will include a home phone with unlimited free local and long distance calls, free calls to Virgin mobiles, wireless networking and 4GB of internet access for $60 per month.

While it uses the mobile network to connect calls, the new service would have all the appearances of a conventional home phone, with a "fixed line" number and the ability to use an existing phone, Mr Davey said.

The $80 per month mobile broadband product comes with a Nokia 6120 handset, $520 worth of mobile calls included and 1GB of internet downloads via a free USB modem.

Data speeds on both home and mobile services, which use the high-speed HSDPA network protocol, averaged approximately 512kbps, Mr Davey said.

But peer to peer traffic would be limited to speeds of 64kbps, Mr Davey said, saying the service was not designed for heavy users. However, there were no charges for over-cap use, he said. "We are not rating upload and we are not charging for excess usage. We will just throttle (speeds)."

The recent rash of price cuts on high-speed, 3G-based internet services was sparked by the launch in March of the "X-Series" brand on Hutchison's 3, which brought pricing comparable to fixed line broadband services to the mobile market for the first time.

After the launch of more plans in recent weeks, Hutchison made another pricing move yesterday, launching a very basic $12 per month offer.

Garner analyst Robin Simpson said whether mobile networks would be able to deal with large numbers of data users remained a key question, but one that would only be answered once subscriber numbers grew.

Nevertheless, having "fixed" users on the mobile network could help plan network capacity, he said.

"The roaming mobile user is harder to deal with because you never know where they are going to be. The home users is a bit easier to plan for because you know where they are going to be and can plan accordingly."

The market for 3G internet services was in its early stages worldwide, making it difficult to predict potential growth, he said.