Virgin's Branson Urges Young Mexicans to Dump America Movil's Carlos Slim Patricia Laya - Bloomberg News
go to original July 29, 2014

Virgin Mobile Mexico calls its customers “rock stars” and charges for airtime by the second, not the minute, so you can “dump your boyfriend for less.”

In truth, the sassy marketing messages are designed to persuade young wireless users to break up with billionaire Carlos Slim’s America Movil SAB, which has seven out of 10 of the nation’s mobile-phone accounts. With backers including another billionaire, Richard Branson, Virgin Mobile Latin America Inc. debuted its operations in June in Mexico, its third market in the region after Chile and Colombia, where it’s been adding a total of more than 100,000 subscribers a month.

What Virgin doesn’t have is a network. Instead, it resells wireless minutes it buys on a wholesale basis from another carrier, Telefonica SA. (TEF) While that model has been successful in other parts of the world, resellers in Mexico have struggled to make inroads against America Movil’s dominance. Virgin is betting that young users, who have grown up in a digital world and crave a constant connection, represent a large market that competitors haven’t tapped.

...Virgin Mobile Mexico aims to lure as many as 1 million users in its first year, Chief Executive Officer Cecilia Vega told El Economista last month. Though it will initially be available in Mexico’s biggest cities, it seeks to gradually expand across the country, said Vega, a former marketing executive at MetLife Inc. who Virgin said is the first female CEO of a wireless company in Mexico.

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