Prepaid iPhone coming to Virgin Mobile USA by July - report
Virgin Mobile's addition of the iPhone to its product lineup will be announced later this week, according to MarketWatch. The iPhone will debut on Virgin Mobile as soon as July 1.
The deal could go toward the $15.5 billion in iPhones Sprint has committed to sell over a four-year span. The company pledged to buy the iPhones last year in a deal that brought the iPhone to Sprint, which is the third-largest carrier in the U.S.
Last week, it was announced that Cricket Wireless would become the first prepaid carrier to sell a contract-free iPhone in the U.S. on June 22. Cricket will offer the 16-gigabyte iPhone 4S for $500 along with an "unlimited" $55-per-month plan.
But Cricket will only sell the iPhone in smaller markets where the brand is available, while Virgin would make the iPhone more widely available to prepaid customers. The Virgin service, which uses Sprint's network, covers 278 million people.
The price for a prepaid iPhone through Virgin was not revealed, but the carrier has prepaid plans that begin at $35 a month for "unlimited" capped data. Tuesday's report said it was "unclear" whether the iPhone would be compatible with those plans.
Apple began expanding the iPhone to regional carriers last October with C Spire wireless, while more were added in April and again in May of this year.
22 Comments
That leaves very few North American providers without the iPhone. Certainly an advantage over any of the Android manufacturers who seldom have one of their models available at more than a couple of telcos.
Hooray! VM has been my ONLY cellphone provider since I first joined them in 2005 because I'm a light user.
But I'd really like to have a smart phone that had iPhone features and was capable of holding a SIM card that
would work abroad.
No word yet from VM but I'll post anything I hear unless I see it here first
Elsewhere says '2.5 GB cap before being throttled.' That's almost as good as AT&T's 3GB. AT&T is going to have to seriously kiss my butt to keep me for the next iPhone.
Hi, does anyone know if this phone would be technically different from Sprint's iPhone. I mean, Would a sprint iPhone be able to be activated on VM?