Sprint Nextel Corp., which is the third largest US mobile phone carrier, is slashing the price of its prepaid wireless Virgin Mobile USA this month, in order to attract more of the young crowd.

Dan Schulman, President of Sprint’s Prepaid Group stated that the plans, which offer unlimited texting, Web and e-mail use, will come at a cost price of $25 to $60 for each month, depending on how many minutes of phone use given for allotment.

He said that this is particularly done keeping in the mind the young slot of population that is primarily on their social networks. There is definitely no use having thousands of minutes, if you practically do not require that much or use them.

The Overland Park, Kansas-based company stated that it lost 578,000 consumers on monthly contracts in the first- quarter, while it was trying to add 348,000 prepaid users.

Under the new costing, a $25 for each-month plan comes with 300 minutes of talk time and plans for 1,200 minutes, and unlimited minutes will be costing $40 and $60 correspondingly.

T- Mobile USA, which is owned by Deutsche Telekom AG, offers an unlimited talk, text and Web service scheme without contract, for $79.99.