Singtel’s Optus takes over Virgin Mobile Australia

Optus — the Australian subsidiary of SingTel — has bought Virgin Mobile Australia. Optus already owned over a quarter of Virgin Mobile, and bought the remaining 74.15% for AU$30 million (US$22.5 million) and an agreement to pay off an existing debt of 1.3 million pounds sterling owed by VMA to Virgin.
VMA has more than 500,000 customers and recorded revenue of 189 million dollars in 2004.
I think the sad thing about Virgin Mobile (at least in Australia) was that it didn’t even try to go beyond its brand. It basically said “we’re Virgin, we have cheap and easy to understand plans”. There was no attempt to integrate any of the other Virgin brands (such as music, airflights) into the mobile service.

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