Virgin Mobile: buy wireless minutes for specific apps
NEW YORK—You typically choose a monthly cellphone plan based on an estimate of how many minutes you think you'll need for voice, how much data you expect to consume, and how many texts you're likely to send and receive. You'll be able to do that as well under a new custom mobile service that Virgin Mobile USA is launching August 9 in 1,800 Walmart stores.
But Virgin will also let choose special prepaid service packages for given apps. So you can pay $5 for unlimited monthly access to Facebook, say, or $5 for unlimited access to Twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest. You can also go with a collection of music apps (Spotify, Pandora, SoundCloud, iHeartRadio and Shazam) for $5.
Moreover, under this new contract-free Virgin Mobile Custom service, you not only get to pick your voice, data and texting options, but you can alter your selections on the fly at any time.
Plans starts at $6.98 per month to activate a line with 20 voice minutes and 20 texts. An unlimited talk and text plan that costs $35.
"If your needs change and you decide you bought too much of one thing and not enough of another, you can change that anytime you want, every day, every week, every month, once a year whatever you decide is right for you," says Dow Draper, the president of Sprint Prepaid Group. Virgin, which operates on the Sprint 4G LTE network, is part of Sprint's prepaid business unit
Virgin has also implemented parental controls at the application level, meaning you can control the hours when family members can use specific apps. You could decide for example to make Facebook off limits Monday to Friday from 8 to 5, or set nightly curfews when given apps or use of the phone itself is forbidden. Moreover, you can implement such controls whether the phone is operating on Sprint's network or using Wi-Fi.
Starting September 1, there's an added benefit: a person who has a phone outside of Virgin — on Sprint, AT&T, Verizon or T-Mobile— will still be able to download the Virgin Mobile Custom control app onto this non-Virgin iPhone or Android device phone, and use it to control any Virgin Mobile Custom phone you may have bought for your kids.
Draper says all this will be transparent to the end users so you can easily determine how to allocate your plan usage.
To take advantage of the service, you'll have to buy one of three phones at Walmart: the $79.88 ZTE Emblem, $99.88 LG Pulse, or $129.88 LG Unify. The Unify is the only one of the three capable of tapping into speedier LTE wireless service.
You can manage plans for up to 5 lines without a contract.
The experience is powered by the ItsOn Smart Service Virtual Network Technology, a cloud-based platform recently licensed by Sprint in a multiyear agreement. Draper didn't rule out going beyond Walmart in the future.
"This is a new way to buy prepaid wireless," he says. "It provides users much greater control over how they use their cellphones and how their families use their cellphones."
Email: ebaig@usatoday.com; Follow @edbaig on Twitter.