Optus - Virgin Mobile Australia

Synopsis

Virgin Mobile Australia (VMA), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Optus, is a consumer focused MVNO with its headquarters in Sydney and stores in Sydney, Brisbane Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide. In January 2006 Optus acquired 74.15% of Virgin Mobile Australia from the Virgin Group, increasing the Optus shareholding to 100%. At the same time, Virgin Enterprises Ltd granted Optus a 15-year licence for ongoing use of the Virgin Mobile brand in Australia. Virgin Mobile was the first Australia provider to adopt the MVNO model. Optus has retained the Virgin brand. Using the Optus network, the company provides its own postpaid, wireless broadband, prepaid, switching, voicemail and SMS platforms. VMA continues to carry an extremely successful brand, and by 2008 appears to be performing reasonably well as a niche operator under the ownership of Optus. Virgin Mobile launched commercial 3G service running over the Optus network in April 2007. It has also launched a new set of content offerings in 2007. Demand for the Virgin broadband service, which runs a broadband connection and a home telephone through a 3G gateway, has been very strong.