Virgin Mobile USA purchased Helio lately, which is super freaking awesome and
all well and good, except for the lack of continuity across plans. Want an example?
style="display: inline; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px" alt="virgin-mobile-shuttle-cell-phone"
align="right"
src="http://nexus404.com/Blog/wp-content/uploads2/2008/09/virgin-mobile-shuttle-cell-phone.jpg" width="79"
height="113" />The rel="nofollow">Virgin Mobile Shuttle. A fantastic, 3G phone that comes without a
contract. The phone itself costs just $80, and for unlimited talk, the price is only $50 per
month. Not a bad deal, is it? You can even add unlimited texting into that deal for
another $10 per month.
Then, of course, there is the Helio Heat.
Cost of $219 (Minus an additional $170 if you’re a new member, and another $49 if you’re purchasing online
for a free phone!) But if you want unlimited talk on that plan (and nothing else) it’ll run you
$80 per month! src="http://www.crunchgear.com/wp-content/pbucket/Heat_black_closed.jpg" width="95" height="161" />Although,
you can move that up to a Completely Unlimited Voice, Data, Text, IM, etc. for $100 per month; but still, in
comparison the prices for the plans just don’t add up!
So what does Virgin Mobile need to
do? Personally, I think they should finally combine Helio with themselves, and even out the plans
to bring them some continuity! Without it, things just don’t seem to be in the right ballpark.