Virgin Mobile USA is now offering consumers new monthly and pay-as-you-go plans without annual contracts as part of its customer acquisition strategy.

Positioned as an alternative to postpaid plans, the Virgin Mobile USA offers include 7 p.m. nights and 500 weekend minutes for $24.99 and unlimited 7 p.m. nights and weekends for $49.99.

"What these monthly plans do is give people familiarity with a monthly plan but without a contract," said Jayne Wallace, head of corporate communications for Virgin Mobile USA, Warren, NJ.

"One of the things we see people doing particularly when the economy is tough is that they need to be able to adjust their wireless expenditure from month to month," she said.

The recurring monthly plans also gives users access to discounted messaging packs, including email, instant messaging, text and messaging.

For prepaid customers, at $34.99 a month, customers are given 300 anytime minutes and 1,000 nights and weekend minutes.

Virgin's Pay As You Go plans now feature roll-forward minutes, where up to 5,000 unused minutes automatically carry over when customers buys a new minute pack within 30 days of their last minute pack purchase.

In addition to all of these features, the Virgin top-up card is now available for $20 equaling 200 anytime minutes, $30 equaling 400 anytime minutes and $50 equaling 1000 anytime minutes. Virgin Mobile USA claims to have more than 5 million customers.

Founder Sir Richard Branson is keynote speaker next week at the CTIA annual show in Las Vegas.

"The main strategy [with this initiative] is that we're continuing to do as much as possible to close the gap between the traditional postpaid and what we offer in prepaid," Ms. Wallace said. "We'll continue to add more of the benefits that people are used to having to sign a contract could get," she said.