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Sprint acquires Virgin Mobile USA for a cool $483m

by Joshua Topolsky posted Jul 28th 2009 @ 8:39AM

Remember Virgin Mobile? Sure you do -- not long ago the last-man-standing MVNO snapped up Helio, and seemed ready to take its place as one of the few boutique prepaid operations still... er, operating. Well that appears to be all but done and done, as Sprint has just announced a "definitive agreement" to purchase the company for $483 million worth of sweet, succulent stock (which looks to be right about what it was valued at to begin with). It looks like Sprint will pair the acquisition with its Boost Mobile brand, which till now was in direct competition with VM. It's not quite rival city, however, Virgin Mobile USA was launched as a joint venture with Sprint, and the MVNO glides on Dan Hesse's network as it is. Still, it does seem to be another indicator that the days of the MVNO are certainly on the wane, though Sprint now looks to own the space -- what little there is.

Court to T-Mobile, AT&T: your voicemail ain't secure, so stop saying otherwise

by Chris Ziegler posted Dec 13th 2008 @ 7:25PM

Thanks to SpoofCard, AT&T and T-Mobile now owe some cash in the state of California, and the rest of us have been given one more reason to lie awake at night. The service -- of questionable non-illegal value -- reports your Caller ID phone number as anything you like, and injunctions filed in Los Angeles demand that the carriers stop advertising their voicemail services as being secure, considering that they can be set to rely on the calling phone number alone to connect to a specific voicemail box. For their indiscretions, AT&T will be coughing up $59,300 and T-Mobile owes an even 25 grand; meanwhile, SpoofCard's parent company will pay $33,000 for advertising its service as being legal in 50 states even though it's not.

[Via Phone Scoop]