Wireless Internet Reviews

Prepaid cellular provider Virgin Mobile has entered the mobile broadband space with a new offering, Broadband2Go. Unlike most of our mobile broadband providers, Virgin plans to offer this on a pay-as-you-go basis, much like their cell phone service. Instead of signing up for a monthly plan, subscribers will purchase data in megabytes. This can be accomplished just like prepaid cellular minutes: with top-up cards which can be found at most major retailers. After the jump, modem and pricing information.

The plans are rather expensive because the service doesn’t require a contract. Postpaid providers can be a bit more forgiving because they have the customer locked up for two years at a time. Virgin’s plan requires no commitment. Once your card expires, you can just walk away.

The plans start at $10 for 100 MB, and cover $20 for 250 MB, $40 for 600 MB, and $60 for 1 GB. The last plan really highlights the differences between postpaid and prepaid. While $40 will get you 250 MB with Verizon, it gets you 600 with Virgin. Yet the highest end offering provides one fifth the capacity of Verizon’s. Sixty dollars is an awful lot to pay for one gigabyte. In fact, the relative discount isn’t all that much, with the 600 MB plan costing 6.6 cents per MB, and the gigabyte plan costing 6 cents per MB.

Along with the service, Virgin will launch the Novatel Wireless MC7600, a small (billed “world’s smallest”) EV-DO Rev. A modem. It will run $149.99, and will be available exclusively at Best Buy by the end of June. The price tag likely locks a customer in for a certain period of time (wouldn’t want to spend $150 on a modem to use the service for just one month), which makes the $60 plan a bit tougher to stomach.