Sir Richard Branson takes the knocks in the press for his ego. But man, Virgin Mobile is as close to "getting it" as I've seen from a cellphone company. Tracfone runs on the same pay-as-you-go premise, and there may be other competitors in that space for all I know. But what Virgin (mostly) groks is that some folks aren't actually packing a cell to talk all the time. I'm one of those folks. My cellphone mainly exists as a place for messages to land, and to occasionally post a message. I've never, ever been in danger of running out of minutes, even at 20 cents a pop. So I find it irritating that the pricing structure of mobile phone plans is skewed toward talking. As if we're still living in the day when people were still calling them "car phones" and having a car fax was bleeding-edge geekitude.
I think it's pretty clear that gadget evolution is not--emphatically not--specializing in talking anymore. Talking is something you do when you're not playing games or checking your email or web apps. of choice. Someone pretty-please dial up Darwin on the Ouija board so we can set the suits at RIM, Apple, T-Mobile (they of the Android phone), Palm (and Branson's newly-acquired Helio) straight on that point. Talk has taken a back seat to data. That and the world is becoming less analog by the minute (think VOIP and Bluetooth), so ultimately it's *all* data.
Understand that I'm not 100% satisfied with Virgin Mobile. Mainly because of their annoying habit of allocating data access with an eye-dropper. Which is entirely an exercise in arm-twisting--meaning up-selling you to a monthly plan. But this is the closest I've come to getting a convenient service on pretty darned decent terms, i.e. price and control over my service. So if Sir Richard would kindly stop treating data as a "premium" add-on, I'd seriously think about throwing more money at Virgin/Helio for the data services that are actually of value to me. And, who knows? I might even write off some of the ego. ;-)
