The company has launched a simple pre-paid tariff plan to be marketed to the 13 to 25 year old age group. Similar to its UK tariff plan, users will be charged $0.25 per minute for the fist 10 minutes of use per day and thereafter only $0.10 per minute.

Virgin hopes the simplicity of the deal will be popular among the US teens and should prove to be refreshing in comparison to complicated evening, daytime and weekend tariffs imposed by other networks.

Many other US operators have scrapped pre-pay mobile, claiming it was not cost effective enough – but Virgin believes the failure was due to poor marketing rather than a lack of demand. Young adults often prefer pre-paid mobiles or are maybe unable to sign up for contract phones anyway, so this simple tariff looks like it could prove to be a hit with US teens.