Virgin Mobile USA has partnered with Best Buy Co. and handset maker Kyocera Wireless to promote a new special edition of its popular Wild Card mobile phone.

A whopping 15,000 Virgin Mobile USA customers who buy the new Wild Card phone will use the device as a ticket for VIP access to the Virgin Mobile Guest Lounge at the upcoming Virgin Mobile Festival Aug. 9-10 in Baltimore, MD.

"Virgin Mobile USA customers are definitely music lovers, and we are too," said Jayne Wallace, vice president of corporate communications at Virgin Mobile USA, Warren, NJ. "We're excited about hosting our third Virgin Mobile Festival this summer and are delighted to partner with Best Buy and Kyocera to create a special edition of our most popular handset and celebrate this summer's experience.

"The festival tie-in is also ideal because of Wild Card's QWERTY keyboard," she said. "Texting activity at the festival continues to expand."

The two-day festival will be held at Pimlico RaceCourse in Baltimore. Bob Dylan, Foo Fighters, Jack Johnson, Kanye West, Nine Inch Nails and Stone Temple Pilots will perform there.

The special edition Wild Card phone also comes with 50 music downloads from eMusic and a one-year subscription to Spin magazine. The device is packaged with a 1.3 megapixel camera and supports streaming music tracks.

Kyocera is a supplier of wireless devices and accessories. The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Japan's Kyocera International Inc., which acquired Qualcomm Inc.'s consumer wireless phone business in February 2000.

Virgin Mobile USA offers data content and products without annual contracts to an estimated 5 million customers. J.D. Power and Associates ranked Virgin Mobile highest in customer satisfaction among wireless prepaid services in 2006 and 2007.

The mobile virtual network operator contributes a portion of profits from downloadable content to help homeless youth and provides postage-paid return envelopes in every new phone package for customers to recycle old phones.

Virgin Mobile USA's national coverage is powered by the nationwide Sprint PCS network.

"We cater to a budget but stylish-conscious crowd that wants the best of essential mobile services at an affordable price," Ms. Wallace said. "The Wild Card fits that bill at $99.99 and this special edition goes one cooler step further connecting to the Virgin Mobile experience overall.

"We're also always exploring opportunities to create customized handsets with our retailers, like color variants," she said.