Commentary

Helio Is Officially Folded Into Virgin Mobile USA

Today marked the official end of yet another MVNO. Virgin Mobile USA has closed its acquisition of Helio. Helio made waves as an MVNO, providing innovative handsets and services at good prices. Can Virgin Mobile keep the Helio spirit alive?

Today marked the official end of yet another MVNO. Virgin Mobile USA has closed its acquisition of Helio. Helio made waves as an MVNO, providing innovative handsets and services at good prices. Can Virgin Mobile keep the Helio spirit alive?Helio was perhaps the best example of what a MVNO could be. It bucked trends followed by other MVNOs and set itself up as a premium service provider. It also bled money like mad. Investors EarthLink and SK Telecom dumped hundreds of millions into the joint venture. As of today, Helio has just 170,000 subscribers, and now they all belong to Virgin Mobile USA.

It's not clear what the future holds for Helio subscribers, but Virgin Mobile USA subscribers should see some improvements. Virgin Mobile will be able to offer Helio's innovative handsets, such as the Ocean, to its subscribers, and will also be able to add Helio's data services, such as Buddy Beacon.


More Mobility Insights

White Papers

More >>

Reports

More >>

Webcasts

More >>

Most importantly, it will allow Virgin Mobile to switch from providing just prepaid services to postpaid services, which are more lucrative. Dan Schulman, CEO of Virgin Mobile USA, said in a prepared statement, "Adding Helio's differentiated postpaid offer to Virgin Mobile USA's existing portfolio will expand both our market opportunity and our ability to deliver new products and services more rapidly. We believe this transformative transaction will bolster our leading position in the wireless space, and enable us to provide customers with whatever they need in wireless, always with our focus on great value, flexibility and customer service. We look forward to revealing our roadmap for expanded, innovative offers in the near future."

Helio was put through the ringer a bit in order to make the deal work. Virgin Mobile forced Helio to get rid of its debt. Helio also closed nearly all of is retail outlets, save for one in NYC.

Helio's previous owners, EarthLink and SK Telecom, will still retain a stake in the venture via stock in Virgin Mobile USA. SK Telecom also will add two of its own to Virgin's board of directors.

The last 15 months has been a turbulent time for MVNOs. Hopefully this acquisition will give Virgin Mobile the strength and resources it needs to survive in a competitive wireless landscape.


Related Reading




Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags

These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags

These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

InformationWeek encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, InformationWeek moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. InformationWeek further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.
T-Shirt Giveaway T-Shirt Giveaway: Each week we're selecting one great comment from our readers. The author of the comment will receive an InformaitonWeek Community t-shirt. So get posting!
Subscribe to RSS

Resource Links