ICT Group Inc.s big Spokane Valley call-center operation is in the process of hiring 100 additional workers here to handle customer relations for a new nationwide wireless-telephone service thats being launched by Virgin Group, the quirky and wildly successful conglomerate owned by Englands Sir Richard Branson.


The new employees60 of whom already have been hired, says an ICT Group spokeswoman at the companys headquarters in Newtown, Penn.will work solely for Virgin Mobile USA, and are to be called the Virgins Central Intelligence Team, an announcement by ICT and Virgin says.


The ICT spokeswoman, Karen Arsenault, says the company plans to hire the remaining 40 members of that team within a month. She declined to disclose what the workers are being paid or when hiring here began.


With the additional workers, ICT will employ 725 in its operation in the former Crescent building at University City, Arsenault says. Thats already a bigger operation than ICT was expected to have here; when it opened its Spokane Valley office two years ago, sources close to the company said they believed ICT would employ about 650 in Spokane.


ICT historically has been close-mouthed about its operations here and elsewhere, but the companys Web site says its more than 40 call centers in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Australia perform services ranging from taking hotel and rental-car reservations to selling life insurance to providing help-desk information for consumer-electronics makers.


Virgin and the ICT Group said in their joint statement that the Spokane-based customer-service representatives will be the voice and personality behind Virgin Mobile in the United States. Their duties will include selling and activating phone service, adding additional minutes of service (a process that Virgin calls topping up), and providing information about the services features and functions. All of their work will be handling inbound customer service-related calls rather than making outbound telemarketing calls, ICT says.


Virgin Mobile officially launched its service in the U.S. last week as a joint venture of Sprint PCS, a nationwide wireless operator, and the Virgin Group, a $6.5 billion conglomerate that includes Virgin Megastores (retailing), Virgin Atlantic (airline), Virgin Airship & Balloon Co. (commercial hot-air balloon operation), and Virgin Bikes (motorcycle sales).


Virgin Mobile USA will target 15- to 30-year-olds by offering pay-as-you-go pricing, with no annual contracts, and fun features such as custom ring tones that range from television-show themes to popular songs, to greetings recorded by a raft of celebrities that can be downloaded to a users phone. In addition, users will receive VirginXtras, which are customizable messaging and information services.


The Virgin Group launched Virgin Mobile in the United Kingdom, where it says it now has more than a million subscribers, and has expanded the service to Australia and Singapore.