HELIO, the MVNO joint venture between SK Telecom and EarthLink, made its debut today. The service is initially being run on Sprint Nextel's EV-DO network but will also utilize Verizon Wireless' EV-DO network later. Pricing plans range between $85 and $135 a month, depending on the amount of minutes. HELIO is primarily targeting the young "professional" crowd and will soon be launching a brand for the Korean-American segment called, "HELIO powered by SK Telecom." And it also has 5 million EarthLink customers it can sell to. Executives have said they expect subscribers to be disproportionately Korean-American initially, but eventually its core demographic, the 18-to-24-year-old user, is expected to dominate the subscriber base.
One service we haven't heard about is the HELIO On Top, or HOT, data services, powered by 724 Solutions' X-treme Alerts Platform, that allows subscribers to program live content feeds to be sent directly to their Helio device's idle screen. Subscribers can select from 10 different live channels, including CNN, Fox Sports, MTV News, MySpace, Surfline and Yahoo.
To read more about HELIO's launch:
- take a look at this article from Dow Jones
- check out this report from CNET News.com