As expected, Sprint-owned Virgin Mobile has confirmed that they will begin offering the iPhone 4 and 4S beginning on Friday, June 29, following Cricket to become the second U.S. carrier to offer the iPhone with a prepaid service plan.
The carrier will offer the iPhone on a contract-free no commitment basis at $549 for an 8GB iPhone 4, or $649 for a 16GB iPhone 4S. While this is slightly higher pricing than Cricket offers on the iPhone ($400 and $500 for the same models, respectively), Virgin’s service plans are extremely reasonable after paying the upfront cost, offering unlimited data and messaging plus 300 minutes for just $30 per month. An extra $10 per month will get you 1200 voice minutes, while $50 per month will get you unlimited everything.
Unfortunately, as with Cricket, Virgin Mobile’s “unlimited” data comes with a “fair use” policy, capping out at 2.5GB of data per month. That being said, it’s really not an unlimited plan at all – so why don’t they just call it a 2.5GB plan? Whatever it takes to deceive customers into signing on, I guess…
