Contract-free iPhone 5s/5c launching on Virgin Mobile next Tuesday

Virgin Mobile (iPhone 5c coming soon)

Along with nine regional United States wireless carriers who yesterday announced October 1 availability of new iPhones, Virgin Mobile on Friday teased that it too will start carrying both the flagship iPhone 5s and the colorful iPhone 5c models pretty soon, as early as next week.

Considering nine of its regional rivals will start carrying the devices next Tuesday, there’s little reason to believe Virgin would risk falling behind that schedule. Virgin Mobile is Sprint’s prepaid carrier so the telco should offer the new iPhones subsidized and contract-free…

The carrier teased the iPhone 5s and 5c on its website.

In fact, Virgin tweeted out October 1 availability for both the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c.

Virgin has some interesting plans, including the entry-level $30 a month unlimited data and messaging with 300 talk minutes and registration of bank billing. This compares favorably to T-Mobile’s best-in-class $30 a month unlimited data/messaging tier, though it offers only 100 carrier minutes.

Virgin Mobile (iPhone plans)

Virgin also has LTE in certain areas. Because it’s a Sprint brand, all of the iPhones Virgin offers are CDMA models.

Should you need 1200 carrier minutes, the $45 a month plan is for you. The $55 a month plan comes with unlimited minutes and all three tiers include 2.5GB monthly data allowance.

Back in June 2012, Virgin Mobile started offering the iPhone 4s and iPhone 4, landing the iconic smartphone for the first time. Curiously, it took them full nine months to start offering the iPhone 5 (Virgin began selling that device in June 2013).

Along with Virgin, the following regional telcos will began selling the new Apple handsets come next Tuesday, October 1: Appalachian Wireless, Bluegrass Cellular, C Spire, Cellcom, GCI, MTA, Nex-Tech Wireless, Ntelos and Strata.

Only Appalachian Wireless shared pricing information: the telco will be offering the 16/32GB iPhone 5c for $49.99/$149.99 and the 16/32/64 iPhone 5s for $149.99/$249.99/$349.99, requiring a two-year contract.