If you have not heard about Helio, you will soon. Helio is a joint venture between Earthlink and SK Telecom (Huge S. Korea company). The two companies have invested $500 million into Helio along with bringing the SK Telecom phone and media capabilities. Helio should be one of the most interesting MVNOs yet. I have several articles about them on my blog. Similar to Ampd, Boost, and Virgin, they are targeting youth and those interested in the latest media capabilities and services on their handsets. They just signed a deal with myspace to further entrenched them with the youth (did you say yutes) What is interesting is that I contacted their PR department to ask about their prepaid program. They said they will not be offering prepaid. With $500 million and targeting the same market as all those over-hyped prepaid companies, you would think they could afford to offer prepaid as well. I bet that this PR person was not correct. We will see. Questions. Do you think they will have prepaid? If not, do you think all these surfer, motocross, and skateboard kids will spend enough on their monthly bills to support the likes of Helio and Ampd?
The thing is, we're not going after the poor skater dude. We don't seek the image that Amp'd or Boost carries although I'm sure a portion of our clientale will be those who mooch off of mom and dad. We are aiming at a demographic capable and willing to spend $$$ on high end features. As for prepaid, we have no immediate plans to offer this. Our company is young and things are likely to change as we monitor and re-evaluate our means of growth so you never know?? Welcome to WirelessAdvisor.
When will we hear about which carrier(s) Helio will use for their physical network? i.e. will Sprint and Verizon both be used, and if so, will both be used in the same MTA/BTAs?
Sprint charges MVNO's far less $$$ than VZW does to rent their network. We opted to utilize Sprint's network for voice and data at launch. We are still trying to negotiate with VZW as well, but there is nothing hard fact just yet.
Thanks for the reply. I would think for your service to really take off, it needs to offer at least robust nationwide voice coverage. Will you have roaming in that sense, or will you be VirginMobile-liken terms of voice footprint?
