If you want to upgrade your iPhone without the hassle of going to a store, Sprint will soon bring the phone to you and set up the phone there. The company’s free Direct 2 You service has launched in Sprint’s hometown of Kansas, comes to Miami and Chicago next week and will be rolling out to other cities later, with a total of 5,000 cars expected to be in service by the end of the year.
When our customers are ready for a new phone, we’ll come to them. Virtually, wherever they want. At their home, at their office, in a coffee shop or even a park. And this is about much more than delivering a phone. We are sending a Sprint expert who will make the entire experience convenient and easy.
Sprint says that qualified customers will be offered the service via text or email when they are due an upgrade, and will then be able to call the number given to arrange an appointment. The representative will help with setup and assistance during the visit, offering the same service you’d get in-store … Expand Expanding Close
Since the launch of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus last fall, we’ve noticed that Sprint subsidiary Virgin Mobile USA has offered limited-to-no stock on its iPhone lineup with “out of stock” messages on each of their iOS device and seemingly no plans to replenish inventory. Specifically, the pre-paid carrier went head first into the holiday season without any iPhone inventory for shoppers.
Virgin later confirmed that it had no specific plans to carry the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus at the time, and now the prepaid carrier has completely scrubbed the entire iPhone lineup from its online store. Expand Expanding Close
If you are planning on purchasing a new iPhone at Virgin Mobile this holiday shopping season, you are all but out of luck. While it somehow still sells the over three-year-old iPhone 4s, the prepaid carrier has not added the iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus to its smartphone lineup and lists last year’s iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c models as out of stock. Expand Expanding Close
Virgin Mobile is knocking another 20% off their marked down iPhones yielding the lowest prices we’ve ever seen on the unsubsidized phones (that’s another 10% less than this weekend’s mention).
Note Apple charges $650 for an unlocked iPhone 5s and $550 for an iPhone 5c so savings is around $200/iPhone. While the iPhones are unsubsidized, Virgin does offer extremely competitive plans on the Sprint 4G LTE network starting at $30/month for unlimited text/data. Expand Expanding Close
Note Apple charges $650 for an unlocked iPhone 5s and $550 for an iPhone 5c so savings is around $150/iPhone. While the iPhones are unsubsidized, Virgin does offer extremely competitive plans on the Sprint 4G LTE network starting at $30/month for unlimited text/data. Expand Expanding Close
Today only, Virgin Mobile is offering prepaid iPhones at up to 20% off. These are some of the best price we’ve seen and the lowest price from this carrier by as much as $110. You can pick up the 16GB iPhone 5 starting at just $440. The 8GB iPhone 4 is available for $280 and the 16GB 4S is $360 right now as well. This discounted prices will appear once the item is added to your cart. Also you must be transferring from another carrier.
Apple iPhone 5 16GB: $439.99 (Reg. $550) Apple iPhone 5 32GB: $519.99 (Reg. $650) Apple iPhone 5 64GB: $599.99 (Reg. $750)
We reported last week that the iPhone 5 would be coming to Virgin Mobile tomorrow starting at $549.99 on its usual no-contract, $30/month unlimited plans. RadioShack will be one of the first to carry the device and is also planning to offer a number of promotional discounts to celebrate the launch.
RadioShack will start carrying the Virgin Mobile iPhone 5 tomorrow both online and in-store for $549.99 (that’s for the 16GB model), but will also be offering $50 for eligible trade-ins until the end of next month. On top of the same $50 trade-in for iPhone 4S and iPhone 4, the retailer is also slashing prices on those two devices to $399.99 and $299.99 until July 6th.
Virgin Mobile will have both the black and white versions of the iPhone 5 available on its monthly no-contract plans starting at $35/month and its $30/month auto pay plan. Expand Expanding Close
The 16GB iPhone $549.99 pricing plan + $30/month for unlimited data is extremely competitive with what’s out there but this comes late in the update cycle. Virgin, a pre-paid division of Sprint which also uses the carrier’s CDMA 3G and LTE 4G networks, will also offer the 32GB and 64GB versions of the iPhone for $649.99 and $749.99 respectively.
For instance, a 16GB iPhone 5 on the $30/month plan will cost $360+$550=$910 over a year or +$360= $1270 over 2 years.
Virgin Mobile USA will launch the iPhone 5 on Friday, 6/28/12on its Beyond Talk plans, with unlimited 3G/4G LTE data and messaging* starting at $35 per month but customers can also receive a $5 per-month plan discount when they register and sign up for automatic monthly payments [“Auto Pay”] with a credit card, debit card or PayPal account, making the iPhone 5 available on Virgin Mobile for as low as $30per month**.
The 16GB iPhone 5, available in Black and White, will be available at www.virginmobileusa.com, at participating Virgin Mobile dealers, and at RadioShack, our exclusive national retail distributor,for $549.99 [excluding taxes]. The 32GB and 64GB, also in Black and White, will be available online only for $649.99 and $749.99, respectively.
*All plans include 2.5GB/month of 3G/4G full speed data.
**Requires registration for automatic monthly payments and Virgin Mobile Service is subject to Terms of Service found atvirginmobileUSA.com.
Canadian iPhone users can now unlock their iPhone on Bell and Virgin Mobile for $75. Mobile Syrup obtained more information on a previous report and discovered that Bell and Virgin’s unlocking programs are available for all Bell and Virgin iPhones, but a customer must not be on contract, must be a post-paid Bell or Virgin customer, and must pay a one-time $75 fee. The unlocking program began today, according to the leaked documents, and it can be completed by contacting Bell’s Credit & Prevention line or Virgin Care. The unlocking program will be “launched in a phased approached,” while “the next Phase in 2013″ will come where they will “expand the eligibility guidelines.”
Before this month, Canadian iPhone users could only unlock their iPhones via TELUS ($35), Rogers ($50), and Fido ($50), according to Apple’s support page. Unlocking the iPhone allows customers to use a SIM card from any carrier with the same bands, allowing for easy mobile travel around the world. Pretty cool, eh?
Virgin Mobile plans to open 10 retail stores tomorrow in Chicago to make the most of the iPhone’s launch on its pay-as-you-go service. The Sprint Nextel Corp.-owned business is the second U.S. prepaid carrier to offer the iPhone, after Leap Wireless International Inc., and its new Windy City stores are a prime opportunity to market—and capitalize on— the iOS smartphone.
The new stores also mark a strategy shift for Virgin, which has previously relied on retailers such as RadioShack Corp. and Best Buy Co. to market its service, said Jeff Auman, a vice president at the carrier.
[…] The carrier will begin selling the iPhone online today, with the stores opening tomorrow. The 10 Chicago outlets could lead to a national rollout, the company said.
Bloomberg (adds to the) reports that Sprint will differentiate itself from AT&T and Verizon iPhone offers by offering a truly unlimited plan.
Sprint, the third-largest U.S. wireless carrier, plans to begin selling the device in mid-October under a deal with Apple for the next model, the iPhone 5, said the people, who wouldn’t be identified because the plans aren’t public. Becoming the country’s only operator to offer the device with unlimited data service for a flat fee may help Sprint draw customers from AT&T and Verizon Wireless, which already carry the phone, they said.
Sprint, probably because it has to, offers reasonable plans without data capping or tiers. Its subsidiary Virgin Mobile would be even better with its $35-$55 unlimited plans.
A new change for AT&T Wireless’ Unlimited Data subscribers will soon be taking place. Rumored to be starting in the first week of October, we’ve heard that AT&T will start throttling the data speeds of the network’s top data hogs. As Verizon (PDF) and Virgin have recently done, AT&T will be adopting a similar plan to try to curb the problem of data congestion and overall network issues that have hurt its 3G network’s performance since the onset of the iPhone.
AT&T will also be releasing its first LTE devices later this year.
The throttling plan will work like the others’. The heaviest users will see significant speed decreases for one billing cycle once they go over a threshold of data (we’re guessing 2-4GB?). These heavy users will still be able to access the network, but at a much slower speed. At the start of the next billing cycle, their speeds will return to normal. We don’t have numbers for AT&T’s throttle speeds but Virgin takes you down to 256Kb/s once you’ve reached their 2.5GB limit (not too bad actually – sometimes we’re happy to get 256kbs). Interestingly, Virgin’s throttle also will also be implemented in the first week of October which may indicate that they’ll be carrying a certain high profile mobile device as well.
Frankly, throttling isn’t so bad if done fairly. It is a good way to penalize heavy users but without them having to worry about overage charges. For high end users, however, it wold make sense for AT&T to add the ability to buy more regular speed data like they do now… Expand Expanding Close
While Tim stopped short of explicitly stating that Apple would pursue a lower price iPhone, he did state that Apple was working hard to “figure out” the prepaid market and that Apple didn’t want its products to be “just for the rich,” but “for everyone”; he also stated that Apple “understood price is big factor in the prepaid market” and that the company was “not ceding any market.” ….He further noted that the handset distribution model was poorly constructed and that Apple would look to “innovate” and do “clever” things in addressing that market.
That was the WSJ tapping the line (har) of Bernstein Research’s Toni Sacconaghi in February.
Today, Virgin announced that it was hiking its data plans to $35/month for unlimited data which coincides with the launch of a big Android phone. But more interesting, to me anyway, was that Virgin is changing its ‘unlimited’ to ‘unlimited with throttling at 2.5GB’ in…October.
Beginning in October 2011, Virgin Mobile will also move to reduce data speeds when a customer’s data usage exceeds 2.5GB in a month but still provide unlimited 3G access without a contract, usage cap, overage or activation fees. Based on current usage patterns, fewer than 3 percent of Virgin Mobile USA customers use more than 2.5GB of data usage per month. After reaching this level, this minority of customers may experience slower page loads, file downloads and streaming media. When a customer’s next month begins, the data usage meter starts back at zero with unlimited 3G speeds.
If Apple was going to do a pre-paid carrier in the US, it would certainly be Virgin (vs. Cricket, US Cellular, Boost). If Virgin did do iPhone, they’d certainly want to put measures in place to prevent the iPhone from killing its network.
We got word yesterday that AT&T was changing its iPhone insurance plans on October 4th, perhaps signaling some new models. With what we had, we’d have given the info about a 25% shot of being legitimate. However, since then, we’ve heard that a big commotion was made about that information being made public. Based on that and today’s Virgin announcement, we’re thinking the probability of that date being right has increased significantly. Expand Expanding Close
