Following the closing of the transaction, Sprint’s prepaid business will be led by Dan Schulman, current Virgin Mobile USA chief executive officer, who will report directly to Dan Hesse, Sprint Nextel president and chief executive officer.

Following the closing of the transaction, Virgin Mobile USA will continue to license the Virgin Mobile USA brand from the Virgin Group under the terms of an amended and restated Trademark License Agreement. Sprint will pay $12.7 million for the initial term, which will continue through the end of 2021. The agreement contains several renewal provisions that will allow Virgin Mobile USA to extend the term until 2047.

Operating on the Sprint Network and Novatel Wireless MC760 Broadband2Go device carries the distinction of being the world’s smallest EV-DO Rev. A modem. It will be available exclusively at Best Buy Mobile starting in late June for $149.99. The MC760 features an internal, advanced dual band diversity antenna, as well as an optional external antenna for enhanced performance on the fringe areas of networks and in highly mobile environments.

[via slashgear]

“This partnership is a great way for Opera to reach Virgin Mobile USA’s large customer base in the United States,” said Opera CEO Jon S. von Tetzchner. “It demonstrates that Virgin Mobile USA recognizes Opera as a valuable service for its customers, who will now be able to enjoy Opera Mini’s speed and amazing feature set while browsing on the go.”

The Opera Mini build for Virgin Mobile USA will support both English and Spanish language support, the first such offering from a U.S. carrier and Opera. The Opera Mini application will be available to Virgin Mobile USA prepaid customers at standard data prices.

Other X-tc features includes

• Boasts 1.3 MP camera, with a large 2.4″ TFT QVGA screen, Stereo Bluetooth® and Micro SD card slot for memory cards up to 8GB
• Room for 500 contacts and voice recognition to call them
• Music Player with dedicated music keys and playlist management
• Messaging support includes SMS, MMS, photos and IM
• Predictive text input for rapid key entry
• Web browsing capability with direct links to key social networking sites

“Our five million plus customers just sent and received 1.1 billion messages in December! Messaging is immensely popular among our customer base, so this is one more device to add to the wide selection of sleek and affordable handsets for which Virgin Mobile USA is known,” said Matias Monges, Vice President, Mobile Devices, Virgin Mobile USA.

With the similar hardware built as the first Helio Ocean, the Ocean 2 has a larger 2.6-inch display screen with QVGA resolution, 2 megapixel camera and microSD card slot. One-click access to updates and alerts across multiple social networks and media sharing sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Flickr and YouTube convenient for users on the move. Its Media Player also provides background mode playback allowing the user to multi-task while listening to music.

Able to work in landscape mode for web browsing, the Ocean 2 also comes with application to view / edit the Microsoft Works, Excel and PowerPoint files right from the device.

Together with the launches of new Helio Ocean 2, Virgin Mobile is eliminating the $5 charge for unlimited mobile to mobile calling and all contract customers will have Unlimited Nights & Weekend calling starting at 7 PM.

Additional Features:

• 3.5mm standard media headset jack/headset
• Stereo Bluetooth® Wireless
• Upgraded Alert Manager
• 3D gaming
• Video ringtones and wallpapers
• Opera Mini preload
• Full-featured Planner includes Calendar, To-Do List, Notepad, Stopwatch, Alarm, Calculator and World Time Clock

Virgin Mobile USA is initially releasing the Ocean 2 in a limited edition Red; black Ocean 2s will start to become available later this year.

[via slashgear]

Mobile Crunch has done an Virgin Mobile Helio Ocean 2 unboxing over at their site.

“We couldn’t be more excited to bring this partnership to our customers by offering such a great way for them to get involved in this important cause,” said Joel Silverman, Vice President of Sales, Virgin Mobile USA. “It’s our experience that Virgin Mobile USA customers look to actively support causes that they care about and this partnership with Best Buy and LG provides a new, visible opportunity for them to do so.”

More about LG Flare here

Performances by a wide variety of artists from the celebrated 2008 Virgin Mobile Festival are available on handsets including: Iggy Pop, KT Tunstall, The Offspring, Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings and Rodrigo Y Gabriela.

The debut of the 2008 Virgin Mobile Festival’s Streaming Videos on both Virgin Mobile USA and Helio By Virgin Mobile cell phones gives customers a taste of the popular annual music event and marks Virgin Mobile USA’s integration of new music content onto increasingly sophisticated mobile devices.

To access the videos, Virgin Mobile USA customers should visit the VirginXL menu, select “Video Player” and then choose “Virgin Mobile Festival.” Helio members should visit to the video homepage and click on “Virgin Mobile Festival videos” or enter VMFEST (863378) on the handset. These complimentary videos will be available on the handsets through December 31, 2008.

Yahoo! oneSearch will provide Virgin Media’s mobile consumers with relevant information on virtually any topic — from news, financial information, weather conditions, Flickr photos and lottery results, to Web and mobile web sites, travel information, integrated information from Wikipedia and Yahoo! Answers, and much more. Yahoo! oneSearch will also display relevant ringtones, wallpapers, games and other content within search results.

“Working closely with our 70 mobile operator partners, Yahoo! oneSearch is a starting point for mobile consumers globally, revolutionizing the mobile search experience by delivering relevant answers to queries that mobile users have while on-the-go,” said Mitch Lazar, managing director of Connected Life Europe, Yahoo!. “Together, Virgin Media and Yahoo! are enhancing the user’s mobile Internet experience in the UK while creating unique opportunities for advertisers to reach a highly-engaged audience of mobile consumers.”

Local.com partnered with Trilibis Mobile, a leading provider of mobile community applications and enabling technologies, to develop and deploy Local Mobile, which is listed in Virgin Mobile USA’s mobile web directory. Local Mobile enables users to access:

• Local business information based on simple “what” and “where” directory search
• Business profile pages, complete with mapping 
• Driving directions 
• Click-to-call functionality
• Listings sent to a mobile phone or device via SMS
• Results sorted by relevance, distance or name 

“We are pleased that Virgin Mobile USA has integrated Local Mobile into its wireless network catalog,” said Bruce Crair, Local.com president and COO. “This partnership allows Virgin Mobile USA customers to easily access relevant local business information from their mobile devices, and is part of Local.com’s efforts to expand the reach of our Local Mobile product to consumers nationwide.”