Virgin Mobile and Helio in merger talks

With talks between Sprint and T-Mobile taking place for a possible merger, two other companies are looking to merge. Helio and Virgin Mobile are also in the first stages of the ‘proposed' deal.

Because both have had a very difficult time gaining subscribers, their merge is a good ideea to create a larger customer base which would result in higher bulk purchases of wholesale service from Sprint as they both work off of Sprint's CDMA network.

The deal would have SK Telecom dropping the cash, which would be used to buy out Virgin Mobile. Virgin Mobile would then purchase Helio in an all stock transaction.

"We don't comment on any rumors out there, but we have said that we believe that there are opportunities for us in terms of non-organic growth, such as another MVNO, or capability set that we might be able to avail ourselves of...Certainly there are a lot of opportunities that we see, and we think some of them are intriguing for us, but it's a matter of what makes the most sense." - Dan Schulman, CEO Virgin Mobile USA