Today, Sprint announced they dropped a cool $483 million on Virgin Mobile. You may remember Virgin as one of the last standing boutique cell providers. They used to compete directly with Sprint’s own Boost Mobile, but no more.
Sprint plans to roll Virgin into its own Boost Mobile network, giving them a corner on the small and ever-shrinking MVNO market. The good news for Sprint is that the acquisition won’t require much work. Virgin already operates on Sprint’s network.
A company press release cited current Virgin USA CEO, Dan Schulman, for his excitement for the new brand. “Virgin Mobile USA redefined the U.S. prepaid segment when we launched seven years ago,” said Schulman. “Sprint is committed to growing its prepaid business and this transaction will provide us with the resources and opportunities to compete more aggressively, and strengthen our position in prepaid.” Let’s hope so, for Sprint’s sake. The company is having enough trouble as it is.
