{"id":381620,"date":"2010-03-02T11:05:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-02T16:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:feeds.phonedog.com:\/\/b35183caa5f1de78a04a58b7e8809dd5"},"modified":"2010-03-02T11:05:00","modified_gmt":"2010-03-02T16:05:00","slug":"article-virgin-mobile-usa-to-end-helio-brand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/381620","title":{"rendered":"ARTICLE: Virgin Mobile USA to end Helio brand"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/r.phonedog.com\/shared\/images\/2010\/3\/95331-v13n083-helio.jpg\" alt=\"Helio logo\" width=\"450\" height=\"180\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In a statement released today, prepaid carrier Virgin Mobile USA announced that the Helio brand would be terminated as of May 25, 2010.&nbsp; To recap, Virgin Mobile USA purchased Helio in June of 2008 after the  latter spent $710 million and was ready to shut their doors.&nbsp; After the purchase, the company assumed that Helio&#8217;s postpaid services would serve as a great conduit for those that liked Virgin and the brand, but didn&#8217;t want prepaid.<\/p>\n<p>Needless to say, after the buyout by Sprint, Helio&#8217;s postpaid services didn&#8217;t make a lot of sense.&nbsp; It&#8217;s not clear what will happen to Helio (Virgin) postpaid accounts.&nbsp; Interestingly enough, customers won&#8217;t be migrated to Sprint right away:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>No customer will be automatically migrated to Sprint&rsquo;s postpaid service. However, Sprint has created a special offer for our customers.<\/p>\n<p>Current postpaid customers are being given $50 towards the purchase of a Sprint postpaid handset with a new two-year agreement. This credit is in addition to any applicable rebates that may apply. Postpaid customers moving from Virgin Mobile to Sprint will also receive $150 off of handsets as part of Sprint&rsquo;s standing new customer offer. Activation fees will also be waived.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>On the one hand, I understand, yet on the other hand, it makes me sad to see the Helio brand go.&nbsp; I always thought the brand had a lot of promise.&nbsp; If only the business operations were executed properly&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mobilecrunch.com\/2010\/03\/01\/virgin-mobile-usa-to-kill-their-postpaid-service-on-may-25th\/\" >MobileCrunch<\/a><em><br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sprint.com\/4G\">Powered by Sprint 4G<\/a><\/p>\n<p><\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/_5Tx8opq_iaQRjx1wg-IChUn5BI\/0\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/_5Tx8opq_iaQRjx1wg-IChUn5BI\/0\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap=\"true\"><\/img><\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/_5Tx8opq_iaQRjx1wg-IChUn5BI\/1\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/_5Tx8opq_iaQRjx1wg-IChUn5BI\/1\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap=\"true\"><\/img><\/a><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/phonedog_cellphoneblog\/~4\/joBp8FaQwnI\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a statement released today, prepaid carrier Virgin Mobile USA announced that the Helio brand would be terminated as of May 25, 2010.&nbsp; To recap, Virgin Mobile USA purchased Helio in June of 2008 after the latter spent $710 million and was ready to shut their doors.&nbsp; After the purchase, the company assumed that Helio&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":671,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-381620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/671"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381620\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}