Helio might help Virgin if they can get better, more fully-featured phones out of them.

I'm in the US and had Virgin Mobile for almost six years, but recently ported out to AT&T. Why? Because Virgin has one phone capable of playing MP3s, and it's terrible--it can't deal with numbers, spaces, and punctuation in file names. Really. Most of their other phones have similar problems--few features, and what features they have don't work.

But they are very cheap for people who, like me, want a cellphone but don't use it very much. I'd go back if this acquisition improves their phone selection.