virgin

Sprint on Tuesday announced it was planning to snatch up Virgin Mobile in the U.S. The buy puts Sprint in a good position to compete with prepaid offerings from other carriers. We talk to CNET News writer Maggie Reardon to hear what kind of money Sprint is making off customers of these prepaid programs, and what it's planning to do with Boost Mobile, the prepaid mobile phone service it already owns.

We also cover Tuesday's billion-dollar acquisition by IBM, and a new study that's found that text messaging while driving can take away enough concentration to … Read more

Today, we hear how the Del Conte's deal with their enemies, find out what kind of deposit Tong makes when he visits a bank, wonder why on earth Google ever even bought the slice of AOL it just dumped, and look forward to the Pre on Verizon--but when?

Verizon to offer Palm Pre in early 2010

Verizon changes tune on Wi-Fi

Verizon customers can sign onto Boingo

Sprint Nextel to buy Virgin Mobile USA

Texting while driving more dangerous than you think

iPhone OS 3.1 will usher in 'augmented reality' apps

Google abandons AOL investment

Google Voice pulled from iPhone

B of A to reverse policy and start closing branches--online and mobile banking the reason

Microsoft uses human computing game to tune Bing

Woman sued $50,000 for Tweet

Follow-up on Yelp lawsuits… Read more

Sprint Nextel is doubling down on the growing prepaid cell phone market in an effort to better compete with rivals, AT&T, T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless.

On Tuesday morning, Sprint, the No. 3 nationwide U.S. wireless operator, announced plans to buy Virgin Mobile USA in a deal that is valued at around $483 million. At first it might seem strange for Sprint, which went into a tailspin after its last big acquisition of wireless competitor Nextel in 2005, to buy another wireless operator. But with a strong cash position and a management team determined to turn the … Read more

Sprint Nextel said Tuesday that it will buy Virgin Mobile USA for $5.50 per share in a stock deal valued at $483 million.

Sprint already owns 13.1 percent of the prepaid mobile operator. Virgin Mobile is a mobile virtual network operator, or MVNO, which means it uses another carrier's network to offer its service. The company uses Sprint's CDMA network.

The transaction, which is expected to be finalized in the fourth quarter of 2009 or in early 2010, represents a 31 percent premium over Virgin Mobile's Monday closing share price of $4.21.

Sprint also … Read more

The Samsung Mantra is just about what you'd expect from a Virgin Mobile phone. The compact flip handset sports a minimalist design with clean lines and a black and gray color scheme. Features include a VGA camera, Bluetooth, a speakerphone, voice dialing, text messaging, a wireless Web browser, a personal organizer, and support for gaming.

The Mantra is available now for $59.99 with free activation and shipping.

Vic the Texas Rancher pilot wrote in, but somehow in the twisted mind of Molly Wood his name became Texas Ranger Panda. And now she can't stop laughing at the cute ranger panda writing in about HD makeup. Which Natali thinks is a conspiracy. We also review the DTV transition and help you get a contract-free iPhone.

The day after the U.S. DTV transition http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10264369-94.html

When’s your country switching? http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/06/us-declares-victory-as-dtv-transition-goes-rather-smoothly.ars… Read more

Today, U.K. Internet service provider Virgin Media announced plans to begin offering unlimited song downloads for a monthly subscription fee. The songs will be DRM-free MP3 files, which means they will never expire, even if the user switches ISPs. Universal, the largest record label in the world, is so far the only label to sign on, but the other majors will probably follow.

The deal was announced along with a threat to crack down on illegal downloaders (perhaps through some sort of BitTorrent monitoring, although Virgin claims it won't be doing the monitoring itself), but the companies left … Read more

The U.K.'s Virgin Media could start suspending persistent file sharers on a temporary basis, using information provided to it by Universal Music.

The ISP announced on Monday that it would, before Christmas, launch an all-you-can-eat music download service for its users, based on a monthly subscription fee. The tracks will all be DRM-free.

"In parallel, the two companies will be working together to protect Universal Music's intellectual property and drive a material reduction in the unauthorized distribution of its repertoire across Virgin Media's network," a statement read. "This will involve implementing a range … Read more

Virgin Mobile USA is launching a new pay-as-you-go mobile broadband service called Broadband2Go.

The service uses Sprint's EV-DO Rev. A network. It will not require a monthly subscription nor will it require an activation fee. To use the service, people need to buy a Novatel USB broadband modem that costs about $149 from Best Buy.

The device and service will be available in late June, the company said. The service is sold in megabyte and gigabyte packages. For $10 a month, users can get 100MB of data usage for 10 days. For $20 they can get 250MB of data, … Read more