Virgin Mobile offers data sharing without a contract

NEW YORK — Last summer, Virgin Mobile USA unveiled a unique data offering that let customers buy special prepaid wireless service packages for unlimited access to given apps such as Facebook and Pandora.

On Saturday, the Sprint-owned brand starts offering what it claims as another industry first, at least for a "prepaid" operator: a contract-free data-sharing wireless plan. Such data sharing plans have been popular with the major U.S. wireless carriers.

Virgin's plans start at $30 per line. You can pay $90 a month for three lines, with unlimited talk, unlimited text and 8GB of shared data. A two-line plan with 4GB of shareable data fetches $65 monthly. Other Virgin so-called "Data Done Right" sharing options are also available.

The deals are exclusive to Walmart and limited at the moment to four specific 4G LTE-capable smartphones: the HTC Desire 510 ($99.88), LG Tribute ($79.88), LG Volt ($149.88) and Samsung Galaxy Core Prime ($129.88). Virgin says more devices are coming at the end of February.

A read of the fine print reveals that video streaming may be limited to slower 3G speeds, and access to data ends once the multi-line threshold is reached, though you can purchase additional data at a cost of $10 for 1GB.

Meanwhile, customers can still purchase those special packages that give them unlimited data access to Facebook, Twitter or other designated social or streaming music apps. Such packages cost $5 a month with usage not counting against a customer's data allotment.

Email: ebaig@usatoday.com; Follow @edbaig on Twitter.