Virgin Mobile USA announced today it will offer iPhone to its prepaid customers beginning Friday, June 29. Virgin Mobile will offer iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S with its Beyond Talk unlimited data and messaging plans as low as $301 per-month on the Sprint® Nationwide Network2. iPhone will be available without a contract and with no fees for activation or roaming. New and existing customers can purchase iPhone at www.virginmobileusa.com, RadioShack, Best Buy and select local retailers.
iPhone 4S is the most amazing iPhone yet, packed with incredible features including Apple’s dual-core A5 chip for blazing fast performance and stunning graphics; an all-new camera with advanced optics; full 1080p HD resolution video recording; and Siri, an intelligent assistant that helps you get things done just by asking. iPhone 4S comes with iOS 5.1, the world’s most advanced mobile operating system, and iCloud, a breakthrough set of free cloud services that work with your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac or PC to automatically and wirelessly store your content in iCloud and push it to all your devices.
Virgin Mobile’s Beyond Talk unlimited data and messaging plans for iPhone start at $35 per month for access to Sprint’s Nationwide Network, and customers can receive a $5 per-month plan discount when they register for automatic monthly payments with a credit card, debit card or PayPal account, making iPhone available for as low as $30 per month. Customers can also use their iPhone as a mobile hotspot through Virgin Mobile for an additional $15 per month.3
“This month marks Virgin Mobile USA’s tenth birthday,” said Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group. “And what better way to thank our fans for ten years of loyalty than by giving them exactly what they want: the perfect plan for the perfect phone. That is the essence of ‘A Higher Calling.’”
Pricing for iPhone on Virgin Mobile USA:
For more information about iPhone on Virgin Mobile, including special alerts for when iPhone goes on sale on June 29, visit www.virginmobileusa.com/iphone.
Virgin Mobile USA, one of Sprint’s prepaid brands, offers millions of customers control, flexibility and connectivity through Virgin Mobile Beyond Talk no-contract plans with unlimited data for mobile phone service, including Android-powered smartphones and prepaid Broadband2Go high-speed Web access on the Nationwide Sprint Network. Virgin Mobile USA customers have access to service on the Nationwide Sprint 3G Network for data reaching more than 276 million people and reaching more than 280 million people for voice services. Virgin Mobile-branded devices are available at more than 40,000 retail stores, including Target, Walmart, Best Buy and RadioShack. Top-Up cards are available at approximately 150,000 locations nationwide and can be used for Broadband2Go services.
Source: Sprint Nextel Corporation
I can just abou tunderstand why a company wouldn’t allow hotspot tethering on an unlimited plan IF (big if) that plan was unlimited. They could end up with a lot of customers who were hammering their system (but were willing to accommodate with a single device), hammering them way more than they could support. On a plan with a data limit, or even a fair usage policy it really irks me that you have to pay more to connect more than one device.
$301 a month doesn’t sound like a good deal 🙂
Copy editors on summer vacation? Just kidding … 😉
The USA and Canada etc get severely stung for mobile compared to Europe. I have a 1 month rolling contract which I can stop at anytime, including free cross network calls, free text and unlimited data including hotspot etc. I stream movies, sport etc everyday through Xbmc on iPhone 4s to appletv2 all for £25 uk a month with 3 mobile and no slow downs on data!
Anyone know/guess if you can get a 32gb iPhone for this? I have Virgin and a crappy Android and am super excited to hear this, even with shelling out the $649 for the 16gb phone. Would pay $749 for the 32gb.
What if you already have an iPhone? Can you switch networks and use it via Virgin?
No. It must be locked to the carrier. Besides, Virgin is CDMA (Sprint’s network); unlocked iPhone is a GSM phone and can only be used on GSM networks. There is no way to bring an outside CDMA phone into a CDMA network the way you can bring a GSM unlocked phone and use with any carrier’s SIM card.
This is awesome! It will be Virgin’s best phone and for $30/mo who can beat that?! LOL love that it is coming out on June 29th exactly 5 years ago from the first iPhone which also sold for nearly the same price at $599 for an 8GB version. They probably will not have options to get the higher capacity versions of the iPhone until they see this as a success. Right now I pay about $130 a month for my AT&T iPhone. After a year of monthly payments and the cost of $400 (64GB) for which I bought it for, my total cost will be $1960 on AT&T whereas on Virgin it could be as low as $1009. Pretty awesome savings!
The real savings begins if you keep the iPhone 4S for year two! On my current AT&T without the cost of the iPhone would be $1560 a year. Virgin Mobile with 1200 minutes a month would be $480. Over a $1000 a year in savings. So I hope people realize that even though it is more expensive at first on Virgin it so pays for itself after a few months. The 4th month is the break even point.
This is by far the least expensive deal out there. Vast majority of people need less than 1200 minutes per month. For them, $40 per month for, what essentially looks like unlimited-all service, is about $60 less than any two-year contract plan with competition. In less than eight months, the difference between monthly rate will have paid off the difference in phone purchase price ($200 vs. $650). And if you don’t talk much, and 300 minutes of voice calls is enough, that saves additional $120 per year.
As a Virgin user for the past year, I can say that their coverage is fairly solid (in NYC), penetrates building and elevators better than GSM (AT&T or T-Mobile) and the only thing where it lacks is data speeds (compared to AT&T or T-Mobile). Their 3G is much like Verizon’s 3G — rather slow (at most 1.5 — 2Mbps).
Less than a year ago, Virgin raised their rates (from $25 – $40 – $50 to $35 – $45 – $55). It seems like they might actually lower them now for the iPhone by $5 (with autopay option). I’m still on the $25 plan, and I’m hoping they let me keep it once I get that iPhone.
I’ve always thought there was a little bit of the Steve in Sir Richard. Good customer experience is a terrific goal for a company. Not the negative statement “Don’t be evil” but the positive statement “Insanely Great”. I’ll save $40 per month off of my oddly structured 3 phone ATT Family Plan. Contract is up in September.
And by far the most beautiful part of this contract is: you don’t have to wait for months until your contract is over in order to get a new phone. They announce new iPhone 6 (or iPhone HD, or whichever), you buy it right away and put it on your $30 per month plan! You go ahead and unload the old device on CraigsList / eBay (for quite a lot of cash, apparently, as they keep value quite well), and you’re all set! If a new model arrives in six months, you can repeat the process.
With subsidy, people tend to treat iPhones as if they are worth $200 new and much less when they’re two years old. I would venture a guess that at least half of iPhone repeat buyers don’t bother getting any value from their old models because they think it just isn’t worth it. A two-year old base model was always worth at least $250-300 (currently, a 2-year old iPhone 4 with a bad crack on the back is going for $220). This Virgin deal is simply spectacular. I’ll be the first in line for it.