Virgin Mobile: gobble up mobile data for $40/mo

Sprint’s Virgin Mobile label will begin offering “all you can eat” mobile broadband subscriptions to users who want to have Internet access with them whenever and wherever, for just $40 a month.

The move will shake up the mobile provider’s current pricing structure, carried over from when the company was still owned by Virgin, which charges users by the megabyte just like its phones that charge per minute of use.

There will still be an option for infrequent Web users to have 10 days of limited access for $10.

This decision slaps the face of AT&T, which no longer offers unlimited data on any new mobile phone service activation. Instead, users are capped to a certain limit and are forced to pay extra charges if they exceed that limit.

Meanwhile, Sprint is working on bringing Virgin Mobile, one of its growing divisions, into a more profitable venture ever since it paid for the the mobile arm of Virgin.

The idea of taking the Internet with you is beginning to spread rapidly across the country, especially in areas with 4G data that can offer download speeds comparable to that offered by traditional broadband ISPs.