Virgin Mobile USA sees telecom consolidation

Virgin Group Chairman Richard Branson dangles on a rope to unveil the Virgin Mobile logo in Mumbai March 2, 2008.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The head of Virgin Mobile USA VM.N said on Tuesday he expects more consolidation in the U.S. telecommunications industry, including deals among providers who rent space on larger operator's networks.

Chief Executive Dan Schulman also reiterated that Virgin was in preliminary talks with SK Telecom Co (017670.KS) "about a number of different potential opportunities." SK controls Helio, another U.S. mobile operator, which like Virgin rents network space to target young customers.

Schulman told the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit that along with deals among mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) he also expects other operators of wireline, wireless and cable networks to consolidate.

"I do believe you're going to see continued consolidation in this industry," Dan Schulman said. "That should not be surprising to anybody. Over the long term networks are commodities ... what you need is more and more scale and more and more cost efficiencies."

Virgin Mobile USA is partly owned by Richard Branson's Virgin VA.UL and Sprint Nextel (S.N).

(For summit blog: summitnotebook.reuters.com/) (Reporting by Ritsuko Ando and Sinead Carew; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)