Virgin Mobile Acquires Helio

I guess that closed Helio stores will reopen shortly after news that Virgin Mobile will be picking up Helio for a cool $39 million in share equity, merging their latest acquisition into Virgin’s mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) business. While this deal absorbs a fair bit of Helio’s rather substantial debt, it also provides Virgin Mobile with 170,000 customers located in the US which could help Virgin Mobile recoup their investment years down the road. Expect call rates to drop with this merger as Virgin Mobile will be able to offer a much more competitive call plan, so it will be interesting to see how everything else pans out. Hopefully consumers will be the winners this time round.