Here’s a new twist on mobile advertising and social networks: Virgin Mobile (NYSE: VM) is launching a Facebook application today that will give customers, who participate in its Sugar Mama advertising program, a new way to earn up to 75 free voice minutes a month. Up until now, the Sugar Mama program gave users free minutes when they watched a commercial and answered a short survey online. But the “Fund My Phone” Facebook application now also earns users minutes when they get their friends to watch ads too. This way, Virgin can expand the audience (of what is probably like-minded individuals) without having to sign up more subscribers to the program. Currently, about 700,000 of Virgin’s five million subscribers have signed up for Sugar Mama.

How it works: A Virgin subscriber adds the Facebook app to their profile page, where friends can see it. The app encourages friends to watch commercials to help them pay for their wireless phone. When friends click on the application, a Sugar Mama ad or other piece of content begins playing for them to view and rate. Advertisers include Xbox, Diet Pepsi, Subway, U.S. Navy, Sony (NYSE: SNE) Pictures and Sony Music. The subscriber then earns six minutes of airtime as soon as the first four “views” by Facebook friends are credited. After the initial viewings, the customer receives one minute of airtime for every four views by their Facebook friends. I can imagine if a girl really wants to talk to a boy and he’s out of minutes, this would be a small price to pay. If it’s any indication, Virgin has given away 26 million minutes of free airtime since Sugar Mama was launched in 2006.

Embarq said today it will end its wireless reseller agreement with Sprint (NYSE: S) Nextel next year, becoming the second phone company following Qwest, to terminate its alliance in recent weeks. Embarq was essentially an MVNO that allowed it to sell an Embarq-branded service on Sprint’s network, but sales fell short of expectations, according to the WSJ. Embarq entered the resale agreement after it was spun off from Sprint in 2006. Gene Betts, Embarq’s CFO said at an analyst conference today Embarq ended last year with only about 112,000 wireless customers—far below its expectations of signing more than one million wireless subscribers. Embarq will support existing customers until sometime in 2009, when it may transition them to another carrier. Meanwhile, the company is exploring ways of tying its landline service to wireless offerings regardless of the carrier.

Qwest announced earlier this month that it was ditching its arrangement with Sprint in favor of a five-year agreement with Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) starting this summer.

After Dish Network paid $712 million for airwaves in the last spectrum auction, there was a ton of speculation as to what the satellite TV company was going to do with it. Now, the company says it is thinking of using the licenses to build a mobile TV service with the help of a yet-to-be-determined partner, Multichannel News reports. The company purchased the airwaves in the big March auction, winning enough licenses to cover the entire country, except for New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Boston. Because the cost of building a network would be high—between $500 million to $2 billion, some analysts estimate—it’s likely the company will take time to make any decision.

Dish Network chairman Charlie Ergen and vice chairman Carl Vogel said during its Q1 conference call that they still have to pick the right technology, the right business model, and the right partner, before it rolls out mobile TV. “Overall, our intent is to certainly bring in partners,” Vogel said. “We’re a long, long, long way from building anything out. We’re a long, long, long way from deciding who our partners will be and when, but we do think it is a valuable piece of spectrum that gives us an opportunity to have numerous strategic discussions that will provide an asset that’s additive to the business we already have.”