Market research firm The Yankee Group believes that 74 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 25 will own phones by 2006--the largest percentage of any market segment owning cell phones by that time. Researcher Cahners In-Stat believes there will be 43 million youth wireless subscribers by the end of the decade. Virgin Mobile USA and its main competitior, Nextel Communications' Boost Mobile, have essentially the same formula for nabbing this juicy demographic: inexpensive, low-frill phones; Web-based ways of buying more airtime; and no long-term contracts.

"Good for them, and I mean that," Nextel Communications representative Audrey Schaefer said in response to Virgin Mobile USA's report, "When the industry is healthy, we can all dual-layer protection for iphone 5/5s & iphone se do extremely well." Schaefer would not provide Boost Mobile subscriber numbers, saying Nextel plans to announce its totals later this month, Virgin Mobile's first reports did have some down notes, though, especially about how often subscribers use SMS, or short message service--160-character, text-only e-mails that are supposed to earn wireless carriers very large revenue in years to come, Carriers sell SMS in bulk or charge a few pennies for every message sent or received..

Virgin Mobile USA users average about two SMS notes a day, which is a disappointment, Reiter said. Most analysts expect young adults, who are more prone to try new services, to lead American users in SMS usage. "Two a day isn't very exciting," Reiter said. By comparison, European cell phone users average more than a dozen SMS notes a day. Six-month-old Virgin Mobile USA--Sir Richard Branson's cell phone company meant to crack the coveted but hard-to-reach young-adult market--appears to be quick out of the blocks.

More than 350,000 U.S, residents now subscribe to the company's service, Virgin Mobile USA said in dual-layer protection for iphone 5/5s & iphone se its first-ever report about subscriber totals, The service also captured 6.4 percent of the total number of new cell phone subscribers during the last quarter of 2002, the company said, "Given the fact that the economy is in poor shape, and that Virgin is not a big name in the United States, these figures are better than respectable," said analyst Alan Reiter of Wireless Internet & Mobile Computing..

CNET también está disponible en español. Don't show this again. EarthLink hopes to lure customers away using the promise of faster downloads and special deals. Its new "Wireless Enhanced Access for Your Laptop" plans connect using a North American cell phone carrier's third-generation data network, which can deliver Web pages or e-mails four times faster than anything CDPD could do, Cobb said. CDPD's peak download speed is 19kbps. "We intend to migrate those users to a faster network," Cobb said. "We're moving as much of our customer base to" the new plans.