Virgin Mobile phasing out contract plans

When Virgin Mobile acquired Helio in 2008, they began offering contract plans. It took a while to get the Helio and VM systems to work together, but they finally got it done. Then, just about a year later, Sprint acquired Virgin Mobile, citing its focus on the prepaid sector. It never really crossed my mind to think about the fate of Helio, and I didn’t see much, if any, commentary on the topic. Yesterday we learned that Virgin will phase out its contract plans, with a complete cessation coming May 25. That gives current VM contract customers 12 weeks to find a new service provider. Virgin hopes that carrier will be Sprint.

Current VM postpaid customers who switch to Sprint will get an additional $50 off a new handset — with a new two-year agreement, of course. This is in addition to the normal phone subsidy, plus any applicable rebates. In other words, there will certainly be a cheap phone involved for customers who switch. Any activation fees will also be waived.

Virgin postpaid customers must contact Sprint or Virgin if they want to keep their numbers. A simple port-out request should do fine, though.

Virgin prepaid customers can rest easy, as there are no changes to their service. Just an upgrade to the broadband offerings, which we’ll learn about in the next post.

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