Virgin Mobile USA says bye bye to their postpaid Helio service

Once considered a big fish in the sea of MVNO providers, Helio will soon be phased out completely by Sprint. Before being acquired by Sprint, Virgin Mobile laid claim to the leftover of customers that Helio still carried along – but that may soon change as postpaid customers are going to be given an ultimatum by Sprint. Helio of course will go down in history as being one of the potential companies that saw waves in the MVNO community with its untraditional looking phones and wide array of services that cater to their customers. Back in June 2008, Virgin Mobile managed to snatch up Helio for $39 million in stock and served as the basis of their non-existent postpaid service. Once Sprint took over the reigns and acquired Virgin Mobile, it would be a matter of time before they plan on halting Virgin Mobile's postpaid service completely – obviously it wouldn't make sense to compete with Sprint's own postpaid services. Existing Virgin Mobile postpaid customers (formerly Helio) are being offered $50 towards the purchase of an already discounted price for a Sprint postpaid handset with their signature on a 2 year contract – activation fees will be waived to make the offer a bit more juicy for them. They'll have to think quick because when May 25th rolls around, it'll be lights out for good for those customers still holding on to the remnants of Helio.

source: MobileCrunch