Virgin Mobile’s Ad-Sponsored Calling Plan

By Geoff Duncan Published May 30, 2006

If you can’t live without your cell phone but find your talk needs exceed your fiscal means, Virgin Mobile USA has got the program for you: SugarMama, a way to earn talk time by viewing advertisements.

SugarMama’s initial advertisers will include Pepsi, Microsoft’s Xbox 360, and the truth anti-smoking campaign; under the offer, Virgin Mobile customers can earn up to 75 minutes of free calls every month if they spend a similar amount of time looking at advertisements and responding with text messages which prove they were, in fact, paying attention to the ads.

Recommended Videos

Virgin Mobile USA’s small customer base (about 4 million subscribers) skews younger than many mobile operators, with some 65 percent of their users under 30 years old. Virgin plainly hopes the plan will appeal to cash-strapped youth, who will be eager to turn over a bit of their attention for free talk time. Virgin also hopes the opportunity to push advertising to an attention-paying coveted youth demographic will be extra-appealing to advertisers

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…

Mobile

Your T-Mobile plan now has bigger gas discounts and international 5G

OnePlus 8T

There are a lot of financial deterrents this year keeping people from planning summer vacations, but T-Mobile is determined to help subscribers take the vacations they've been dreaming of with its newly announced Coverage Beyond initiative. In short, Coverage Beyond aims to reduce the cost of traveling for T-Mobile's most popular coverage plans by giving subscribers three great perks: free 5G data abroad, free streaming while on flights, and a handful of other travel perks like reduced gas prices.

Some of T-Mobile's previous connection efforts gave its customers limited free low-speed data and free texting while abroad. This was a good way to reduce the stress of being out of the country for a short period, but Coverage Abroad ups the ante by offering 5GB of high-speed data to all Magenta Max and Business Unlimited Ultimate plan owners in 210 countries. In countries where it's available, that "high-speed" data may even be 5G. Magenta and most other business plan owners can also count on free high-speed international data, but only in 11 select European countries.

Mobile

The best mobile plans and smartphones for seniors

best mobile plans and cell phones for seniors

Picking the right smartphone can be a tedious and sometimes overwhelming task. There are scores of phones to choose from at any given moment, and many of them look the same but differ in terms of storage and performance. If you're not a tech-savvy grandparent or you're shopping for a grandparent that doesn't know or care about the differences between iOS and Android, simplicity is probably what you want the most out of a modern smartphone.

Sure, modern devices only have a few physical buttons, but the sheer number of icons on the home screen can be intimidating upon startup. Similarly, while you can go into the settings and customize various aspects of the device to suit anyone's needs, navigating the back end can be frustrating when it's unfamiliar. For those grandparents that aren't in touch with their tech side, what smartphone should they get? How much are you willing to spend on a phone for grandma and grandpa? Do they need data? Are they aware of what data is and what it's for?

Mobile

Dish enters mobile space with Celero5G smartphone, big plans

The DISH Celero 5G sitting on a bannister in the sun

Dish Network (yes, that Dish Network) made waves in 2021 by announcing that it was not only building its own greenfield 5G network from the ground, but was also designing and manufacturing a smartphone to go with it.

A move like this was probably expected by most people after Dish merged with Boost Mobile in 2020, but the sheer size of this swing is pretty incredible when you think about it. But why is the longtime satellite TV provider getting into not only the telecom game -- but the hardware arena, too?