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Sprint To Acquire Virgin Mobile

http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kcur/local-kcur-851823.mp3

Kansas City – In this recession pre-paid, the low end of the mobile phone market, is hot. Sprint established itself as a price leader in that segment early this year, coming out with its Boost, 50 dollar a month, unlimited voice plan. Virgin Mobile matched that. Now with Sprint taking over Virgin, the Overland Park based company will gain more than 5 million customers . But analyst Christopher King doesn't see a lot in the deal for Sprint, beyond that.

King: At the end of the day, it certainly raises more questions about what Sprint wants to be when it grows up.

King's point is that Sprint spends the bulk of its marketing budget promoting its high speed wireless offerings, and new i-phone alternative, the Palm Pre all stuff for the more lucrative, high end of the market.

I’ve been at KCUR almost 30 years, working partly for NPR and splitting my time between local and national reporting. I work to bring extra attention to people in the Midwest, my home state of Kansas and of course Kansas City. What I love about this job is having a license to talk to interesting people and then crafting radio stories around their voices. It’s a big responsibility to uphold the truth of those stories while condensing them for lots of other people listening to the radio, and I take it seriously. Email me at frank@kcur.org or find me on Twitter @FrankNewsman.
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