Virgin Mobile Plans to Resell Wireless Service in France

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Virgin Mobile Plans to Resell Wireless Service in France

12:59 am on April 4, 2006 | Category: Telecom Services, Mobile Devices

British entrepreneur, Richard Branson, is promising to bring fair pricing to the French wireless market, by launching a highly competitive Virgin Mobile-branded offering in the country.

The service will be launched in partnership with Carphone Warehouse, which has an arrangement to piggyback on an existing network owned by Orange.

Branson claims that “the bulk of people in France have been ripped off big-time,” and that his company intends to make an honest effort to fix it.

“The poor, the students and the middle-classes have been paying for subsidising the rich, who can get bundles that are not bad,” Branson said. “Eighty-five percent of the market is paying 50 percent more than the average consumer in the rest of the world.”

The new service will be targeted mostly at younger users, with services like free SMS messaging, and Virgin is aiming to sign-up 1 million subscribers within three years.

Such a goal is not unthinkable for a company like Virgin Mobile, which has become the number wireless operator in the UK, after helping to pioneer the MNVO concept in that country. It has since launched services in Australia, Canada, and the United States.

By extending its services to France, which is seen as Europe’s least competitive wireless market, Virgin hopes to make a big splash with consumers, exposing other providers for their non-competitive pricing practices.