Boost Mobile is an American wireless service provider owned by Dish Wireless. It uses the Dish, AT&T and T-Mobile networks to deliver wireless services. As of Q2 2023, Boost Mobile, along with its sister brands Boost Infinite, Ting Mobile, Republic Wireless, and Gen Mobile, had 7.73 million customers.
It was founded as a joint venture between Peter Adderton, Craig Cooper, Kirt McMaster, and Nextel Communications. It was purchased by Nextel in 2003 and, as a result of the merger between Sprint Corporation and Nextel, then became owned by Sprint in 2004. It would then be purchased by Dish Wireless on July 1, 2020, as a result of the merger between Sprint and T-Mobile.
History
After Peter Adderton founded Boost Mobile Australia and New Zealand in 2000, Peter Adderton, Craig Cooper, and Kirt McMaster brought the Boost Mobile brand to the United States in 2001 as a joint venture with Nextel Communications. Using Nextel's iDEN network, Boost Mobile offered an unlimited push-to-talk service, marketed as only costing a dollar a day, at a time when cellphone plans offering unlimited talk were still rare. The service was initially exclusive to markets in areas of California and Nevada and was marketed towards urban minorities, often using urban slang in advertisements. Eventually, Nextel became the sole owner of Boost's United States operations in 2003. Nextel began to expand the brand elsewhere in the United States in late 2004 after its acquisition by Sprint Corporation which was announced on December 15, 2004.
After the approval of the merger in July, 2005, Sprint Corporation acquired Nextel Communications, leaving Boost Mobile as a subsidiary of the merged company, Sprint Nextel Corporation. Boost Mobile still continued to use the previous Nextel iDEN infrastructure for its service, but in 2006, began to offer a new Unlimited by Boost Mobile service in select markets using Sprint's CDMA network, offering unlimited talk, text, and internet. While the plans resulted in significant growth for Boost Mobile, Boost did not begin shifting to CDMA entirely.
To compete with unlimited offerings from competitors in the wireless industry, Boost Mobile announced on January 15, 2009, that it would launch a Monthly Unlimited Plan. The plan was accompanied by re-focusing the brand towards a broader demographic than before. The new unlimited plan resulted in a net gain of more than 674,000 customers in about three months. Despite this lift, Nextel overall suffered a gross subscriber loss of 1.25 million contract subscriptions. The unexpected surge in popularity for the service caused significant strain on the Nextel iDEN networkas many customers reported long and sometimes week-long delays in receiving text messages. A Boost Mobile spokesman said that they did not anticipate the level of popularity for the new service and that efforts to improve the network had been implemented to help mitigate the problem.
At the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show, Boost Mobile announced it would begin to offer a new unlimited plan using Sprint's CDMA network. Sprint would also acquire fellow prepaid wireless provider Virgin Mobile USA in 2010both Boost and Virgin Mobile would be re-organized into a new group within Sprint, encompassing the two brands and other no-contract phone services offered by the company.
Boost Mobile's parent company decommissioned the iDEN network on June 30, 2013; most iDEN customers have been migrated to the Sprint CDMA network.
In January 2020, Sprint discontinued the Virgin Mobile USA brand and transferred its customers to Boost Mobile.
On April 1, 2020, Sprint merged with T-Mobile, which also announced plans to sell Boost Mobile to Dish Network. The sale was completed on July 1. All new Boost Mobile customers will use the T-Mobile network, with the remaining Sprint customers to be moved to the T-Mobile network over time.
On July 19, 2021, Dish Wireless announced it was purchasing $5 billion of wholesale wireless over the next 10 years from AT&T. In exchange, Dish will share some of its 5G spectrum with AT&T.
Released phones
In June 2010, Boost Mobile launched the Motorola i1 smartphone, Boost's first iDEN-based push-to-talk Android phone, and in April 2011, they announced the Samsung Galaxy Prevail, the company's first CDMA-based Android offering.