Virgin has announced that it will be making the transition to an iPhone only service provider. In addition, the company will be offering a year of service for $1.
A Year of Service For One Dollar
As part of an ongoing promotion, Virgin Mobile will offer customers a year's worth unlimited talk, text, and data for only $1. That being said, Virgin also announced that they will throttle the data of customers who exceed 23GB during a single billing cycle. To be fair, most users probably won't use that much anyway. Beyond that, the service appears to work as advertised. In exchange for $1, customers will get access to unlimited service for a single year.
The offer only runs through June 31, 2017. After that point, the promotional offer will be replaced by a six-month plan.
When the year is up, users will be locked into Virgin's standard rate of $50 a month. However, there is no contract so it is possible to change providers, but it may be difficult getting the iPhone transferred to a new network.
In terms of costs, there are a couple of catches. For starters, there are taxes and monthly fees, but those will still only come out to a few dollars a month. In terms of monthly phone bills, that's still a pretty good deal.
iPhones Aren't Cheap
The biggest hurdle, in terms of cost, will be the fact that customers will have to buy an iPhone. It can either be bought from Virgin or an Apple store, but users cannot bring a phone from another network. Virgin offers the iPhone all the current models of the iPhone for the same price as Apple with the exception of the iPhone Se. The said model is discounted from Apple's price of $399 to $279 so that is the best bargain for budget conscious consumers.
It remains to be seen how successful this offer will be. Its limited availability means that Virgin doesn't have much time to market the deal. Beyond that, the high cost of the iPhone, even the SE, means that more budget-conscious consumers who are most likely to be interested in this deal may pass.
Powered By Sprint
Aside from the cost of the iPhone, one of the biggest hurdles facing consumers will be the fact that Virgin relies on Sprint's network. Sprint has long been considered the network with the worst coverage, so those who are concerned about coverage may want to look elsewhere.
