Virgin Mobile USA, Inc. announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Helio, a joint venture between SK Telecom and EarthLink, Inc. Under the terms of the agreement, Virgin Mobile USA will acquire Helio from SK Telecom and EarthLink for limited partnership units equivalent to 13 million shares of Virgin Mobile USA class A common stock, with a value of $39 million based on the closing price of Virgin Mobile USA's class A shares on June 26, 2008.

With the acquisition of Helio, Virgin Mobile USA will gain an established and highly advanced postpaid billing and customer care platform. In addition, Helio has approximately 170,000 existing subscribers with an ARPU of approximately $80 and a handset inventory of approximately 85,000 units with a book value of approximately $17 million.

Acquiring Helio's customers and expanding its offer portfolio is expected to increase Virgin Mobile USA's volume of minutes and drive down the Company's cost per minute under an amendment to its PCS Services agreement with Sprint.

 Consumers who opt for Virgin Mobile USA's new "Totally Unlimited" calling plan will be able to talk as much as they want each month across days, nights, weekdays and weekends. The Totally Unlimited plan -- like all Virgin Mobile USA calling plans -- will be available for purchase with cash using Top-Up cards, or with credit/debit for maximum convenience.

Virgin Mobile USA today launched the Slash by Samsung, the company's first wireless handset developed with global consumer electronics powerhouse, Samsung Mobile.

Retailing at just $79.99, Slash is a slim slider phone with a sleek and compact profile. It comes equipped with a VGA camera, Bluetooth wireless technology, and full messaging capabilities (IM, text messaging and email).

Slash by Samsung includes such must-have features as an integrated speakerphone and voice-activated dialing, and boasts a bright color display and lots of storage.

The phone can hold up to 499 contact entries, with up to five phone numbers, two email addresses and one website per individual. Slash is also outfitted with preloaded and customizable Autotext for fast and easy text messaging.

Games such as Gameloft Jukebox and Superscape Demo come preloaded on the handset.

Facebook has a unique new application that lets friends earn wireless airtime for other friends who are Virgin Mobile USA customers. Virgin Mobile USA has designed the "Fund My Phone" application, allowing Virgin Mobile USA's more than 5 million customers to get their Facebook friends to help pay for their wireless minutes.

The "Fund My Phone" application is fast to install and easy to use. Virgin Mobile USA customers can download the application and place it within their Facebook page. The application allows the customer to share up to five different spots with Facebook friends.

As an extension of Sugar Mama, if the user's friends will watch ads on their Facebook page those friends are earning the host Virgin Mobile USA airtime. Sugar Mama will showcase advertisers' creativity offering these program partners "peer endorsed" exposure.

The Samsung Slash is coming soon to Virgin Mobile USA (see website).  The new slider handset features a camera phone, Bluetooth, full color screen, mobile web, speakerphone, and voice dialing. 

The handset is 3.8” X 1.8" X 0.7" inches and weighs 3 oz. Stuff for download include real music (MP3) ringtones, chat park, and games.

The Samsung Slash also comes with Virgin Mobile USA's Sugar Mama service which is a service that allows you to earn free minutes by watching short online spots, rate them, and give your feedback.

For every minute of your time, you get a minute of airtime. Or, fill out short surveys about brands, products, and services. Get 5 minutes of airtime for completing a 5-minute survey.

Visit http://www.virginmobileusa.com/stuff/sugarmama.do to find out more about Sugar Mama.

Virgin Mobile USA has unveiled a host of new Monthly and Pay As You Go Plans Without Annual Contracts that offer consumers even better value and more flexibility. 

With no annual contracts, Virgin Mobile USA allows its more than 5 million customers to change plans at any time without hassle or extra charges.

Virgin Mobile USA has enhanced its highly competitive monthly plans, already a smart alternative to traditional postpaid offerings, and is providing consumers with clear comparisons to its competition.

For example, Virgin Mobile USA offers include 7 p.m. Nights and Weekend Minutes (500 minutes for $24.99, e.g.) and Unlimited 7 p.m. Nights and Weekends for just $49.99.

Priced at $29.99, Flare is appearing at retail locations this month, and is available for purchase on the Virgin Mobile USA Web site (VirginMobileUSA.com). Loaded with Bluetooth wireless technology and equipped with an array of features consumers love, including full texting capabilities, Flare truly shines at this affordable price.

Flare is the first handset in the Virgin Mobile USA line-up, other than a few select special editions, to offer Spanish-speaking customers in-language options right at their fingertips, through a preloaded newly enhanced Spanish user interface and menu. Like other Virgin Mobile USA phones, Flare allows customers to choose ringback tones, download fun diversions from VirginXL, and check account balances.

This fall, Virgin Mobile USA's will launch the new Wild Card by Kyocera Wireless.  The handset is for music lovers looking for the convenience of Bluetooth wireless technology in a sophisticated handset with the ease of texting on a full QWERTY keyboard should look to be dealt.

The first Virgin Mobile handset with streaming music capability, Wild Card gives customers the ability to listen to their favorite music right through the phone, and "ups the ante" on the full texting keyboard capabilities of last year's Switch_Back phone.

Weighing in at just over 4 ounces, the sleek and stylish Wild Card "aces" great functionality within a compact and trendsetting clamshell casing. Among its most notable features are two vibrant color displays.

The first on the front face of the phone is for voice calls. But by turning the phone sideways and giving its face a quick flip, customers have access to the Wild Card's wide screen -- along with a sizeable QWERTY keypad designed to make emailing, texting, IMing, gaming, browsing online, or streaming full music tracks simple and enjoyable.

The next generation of last year's highly popular Slice, this Super Slice is a trim, candy bar-style handset that boasts one of the country's slimmest profiles in the no annual contract wireless arena, at 0.4 inches thin.

The Super Slice is also Virgin Mobile's first Bluetooth® wireless technology- enabled handset, giving customers new levels of flexibility and convenience. Priced at an affordable introductory price of $59.99 and equipped with a VGA camera with 3x zoom and numerous other features, the Super Slice will be available in mid-September at Virgin Mobile's participating retail partners.

The Super Slice comes with pre-loaded games and is powered by a strong Lithium Ion battery with up to 270 minutes of continuous talk time (4.5 hours) and stand-by time of 230 hours. It measures just 0.4 inches deep with a height of 4.4" and width of 1.9" -- about the width of a standard business card. Super Slice is light on the pocket as well as the wallet, weighing a mere 2.5 ounces.

J.D. Power and Associates announced today that Virgin Mobile USA has been ranked the highest of America's Wireless Prepaid Services for Customer Satisfaction Excellence for the second year in a row.

In its 2007 Wireless Prepaid CSI Study, focused specifically on the prepaid or "Pay As You Go" market, J.D. Power and Associates ranked Virgin Mobile highest for Customer Satisfaction over six other carriers in the study.

Overall, Virgin Mobile's performance excelled in all seven factors that J.D. Power and Associates measured in meeting customers' wireless service expectations in this very competitive field. Specific strengths of Virgin Mobile USA service cited by respondents were cost of service, account management, initial activation and choice of service plans. Virgin Mobile customers can manage their accounts online, through Customer Care, and directly on handsets.

Virgin Mobile USA's over 4.8 million customers can now access a variety of social networking opportunities including a group of niche-targeted mobile-optimized sites. The leading youth wireless provider is partnered with Intercasting Corporation on its ANTHEM platform to bring a selection of diverse Web-based social networking and community sites to customers' fingertips through a single and intuitive mobile solution.

The ANTHEM platform provides a web-like, media-rich interface to give Virgin Mobile customers a fully branded and customized mobile version of their favorite social networking services that is surprisingly functional and easy to use. No matter which social networking provider one visits, the consistently simple user interface makes it easy to view photos, send and receive messages, post comments, search profiles and more.

Pricing to access this broad social networking platform and multiple sites is constructed to create maximum flexibility. Customers can choose to pay by the day or by the month: $1.00 provides use for 24 hours with a cap of half a megabyte of data, and $3.99 provides access for one month with a cap of five megabytes of data.

An estimated 500 million dead phones are just sitting around in drawers, closets and who knows where else. Less than 10% get recycled. Many are dropped into landfills. Well Virgin Mobile has become the first carrier to include a recycling envelope in the box with every phone it sells (online or retail). The postage paid envelopes make it easy to recycle the handset with ReCellular, a leading mobile phone recycler.

When you send your phone to Virgin Mobile for recycling, they first attempt to refurbish it and provide it to a new Virgin Mobile customer (this is re-use - the highest form of recycling).  Or, they'll send it on to people who are in need of a mobile phone, at a reduced price. If they can't re-use or re-furbish the phone you send in, then they'll recycle it in an environmentally correct way. By recycling your old phone(s), you'll be helping the environment, and also help young people in need.

Virgin Mobile USA has just launched the new metallic ivory handset called Oystr, by Kyocera Wireless.  The Oystr is targeted for teenager and is very affordable. 

The phone showcases a white clamshell body, thus the name Oystr. The cell phone includes internal color display, two-way speaker phone, text messaging, and customized Virgin Mobile hardware.

The company has kept the phone simple yet functional and will also appeal to first time users.

Features:

• Full-color screen
• Mobile Web Browsing
• Text Messaging
• Two way speakerphone
• TTY/TDD enabled for the hearing impaired

Virgin Mobile is launching a new cell phone service that will allow its users to earn free airtime by opting in to advertising.