Boost Mobile

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.^[5] Boost Mobile then became 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.^[6]

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.^[7] 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.^[8] 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 network—as 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.^[9]

At the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show, Boost Mobile announced it would begin to offer a new unlimited plan using Sprint's CDMA network.^[10] Sprint also acquired fellow prepaid wireless provider Virgin Mobile USA in 2010—both Boost and Virgin Mobile were re-organized into a new group within Sprint, encompassing the two brands and other no-contract phone services offered by the company.^[11]

In 2019, as part of the merger of Sprint Corporation and T-Mobile US, Sprint agreed to divest its prepaid wireless businesses, including Boost Mobile, in order to reduce antitrust concerns. In January 2020, Sprint discontinued the Virgin Mobile USA brand and transferred its customers to Boost Mobile.^[12][13]

On April 1, 2020, Sprint merged with T-Mobile; the surviving company, T-Mobile, in accordance of the terms of the merger, entered into a $1.4 billion deal to sell Boost Mobile to Dish Network.^[14] The sale was completed on July 1. All new Boost Mobile customers used the T-Mobile network, with the remaining Sprint customers to be moved to the T-Mobile network over time.^[15] As part of the deal, Dish committed to building out a 5G network serving at least 70% of the U.S. population by June 2023 and was granted access to the T-Mobile network for seven years.^[16][17]

To grow its wireless subscriber base, Dish acquired Ting Mobile on August 1, 2020,^[18] Republic Wireless on March 8, 2021,^[19][20] and Gen Mobile on September 1, 2021.^[21] On July 19, 2021, Dish Network announced it was purchasing $5 billion of wholesale wireless over the next 10 years from AT&T. In exchange, Dish shares some of its 5G spectrum with AT&T.^[22]

In December 2022, Dish launched a postpaid service under the spin-off brand Boost Infinite.^[23]

In February 2023, Boost Mobile's parent company Dish Network suffered a major ransomware attack which resulted in internal outages, loss of service and data theft at its subsidiary companies.^[24] Boost Mobile customers reported that they were unable to contact customer service, cancel their subscription, or make payments. The outage affected customers across the U.S.^[25][26]

Service outages lasted for more than a month, with customers reporting wait times for customer service stretching to more than 14 hours.^[27] Full service was not restored until May 2023.^[28]

On August 8, 2023, Dish Network Corporation and EchoStar Corporation announced their intention to merge. The two companies claimed that it would grant them additional resources and flexibility in deploying connectivity services.^[29] On December 31, 2023, EchoStar completed its acquisition of Dish Network, including its wireless division.^[30]

EchoStar President and CEO Hamid Akhavan promised, in May 2024, that there would be a reboot of the Boost brand in the second half of 2024. On July 17, 2024, EchoStar merged its prepaid Boost Mobile and postpaid Boost Infinite into a rebranded Boost Mobile; the company introduced new 5G unlimited plan offerings that would start at $25 per-month, and include both a 30-day money-back guarantee, and a promotion offering a price lock guarantee for postpaid subscribers.^[31]

Dish Network began building a nationwide 5G wireless network as part of the company's strategy to expand its services beyond satellite television. After acquiring Boost Mobile, Dish began building out a standalone 5G network, that does not rely on any LTE infrastructure.^[32]

In May 2022, Dish began to launch its 5G network, offering service under the "Project Genesis" brand in Las Vegas. The company stated that it planned to serve at least 120 cities by the June 2023 deadline.^[33] In June 2022, Dish announced it had met the FCC mandate to provide coverage to 20% of the U.S. population.^[34] In June 2023, the company announced that it had met the requirement to provide coverage to 70% of the U.S. population by June 14, 2023.^[35]

As part of EchoStar's rebranding of Boost Mobile, it began referring to its 5G wireless network as the "Boost Mobile Network" and discontinued its usage of the Dish Wireless brand.^[36]

On September 18, 2024, EchoStar requested an extension for the final construction deadlines associated with several of its AWS-4, AWS-3, H Block, 700 MHz, and 600 MHz spectrum licenses until December 31, 2026, with further provisions for extension until June 14, 2028 if certain commitments are met.^[37] EchoStar committed to expand its nationwide 5G coverage to 80% of the U.S. population by December 31, 2024 and accelerate and expand its final buildout milestones in more than 500 license areas. The company promised to offer a nationwide low-cost 5G plan offering 30 GB for $25 per month and a low-cost 5G device costing $125, and it offered to increase the number of 5G towers to 24,000 by mid-2025 and allow small carriers and tribal nations to lease its unused spectrum.^[38] EchoStar announced that the FCC granted the 5G buildout framework for the Boost Mobile Network on September 20, 2024.^[39]

The following is a list of known frequencies that Boost Mobile employs or plans to employ in the United States.

In June 2010, Boost Mobile launched the Motorola i1 smartphone, Boost's first iDEN-based push-to-talk Android phone,^[51] and in April 2011, they announced the Samsung Galaxy Prevail, the company's first CDMA-based Android offering.^[52]

In July 2012, Boost Mobile released the BlackBerry Curve 9310,^[53] and in March 2013, they released the HTC One SV and the ZTE-made Boost Force smartphone, the company's first device using Sprint's 4G LTE network.^[54] In June that year, Boost Mobile released the LG Optimus F7, the company's first device with a removable Universal Integrated Circuit Card (UICC) for LTE network authentication/access, a new form of Subscriber identity module (SIM card).^[55]

In December 2014, Boost Mobile released the Lumia 635, its first smartphone using Microsoft's Windows Phone mobile operating system,^[56] and in July 2015, they launched the NETGEAR Fuse along with no-contract Wi-Fi Hotspot plans, its first Mobile Wi-Fi Hotspot device.^[57]

The Boost Mobile brand was initially marketed to the teen and young adult demographics, heavily focused on action sports, lifestyle and urban music. Boost Mobile's past American advertising campaigns featured Los Rakas, Terry Kennedy, Kanye West, Ludacris, and The Game, and used the slang slogan "Where you at?"^[58] In late 2007, a Boost Mobile commercial with Young Jeezy, Jermaine Dupri, and Mickey Avalon was released. The "Where you at?" slogan referenced the walkie-talkie feature on all Boost Mobile phones and later evolved to highlight a social GPS application that was available on selected Boost Mobile phones.^[59] Boost have also used Indy Car driver Danica Patrick in a commercial. A 2005 episode of Adult Swim's Aqua Teen Hunger Force titled Boost Mobile was an early example of native advertising within a regular television series.

Boost Mobile has also produced some regional campaigns, including providing live paper shredders at bus stops in Chicago and Boston, where several times an hour sample contracts from competing wireless service providers would be shredded into confetti.^[60]

On January 20, 2010, Boost Mobile's then-parent company Sprint Nextel managed to secure some of the 1985 Chicago Bears players (including Jim McMahon, Willie Gault, and Mike Singletary) to re-create the team's famous "Super Bowl Shuffle" rap song and music video as "The Boost Mobile Shuffle" during the first quarter of the Super Bowl XLIV.^[61]

Boost Mobile debuted a television campaign in June 2012 to promote the HTC EVO Design 4G, its first smartphone using Sprint's 4G WiMAX network. The ads feature comedian Faizon Love as the "4Genie", a genie who magically appears where cellphone users seek low-cost 4G.^[62]

On July 1, 2021, the first day on which NCAA student-athletes were allowed to receive compensation for the use of their name, image, and likeness (NIL), Boost announced that it had signed Haley and Hanna Cavinder, twin basketball players at Fresno State with a social media following in the millions, as spokespersons.^[63]

Boost Mobile participated in the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), providing affordable connectivity and mobile services to eligible households. Through the Affordable Connectivity Program, participants received a discount on Boost Mobile phone or mobile broadband plans.^[64] The program collaborated with wireless carriers, like Boost Mobile, to offer payment assistance based on income and provide a one-time device subsidy. The ACP was a federal government program operated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) until it lost funding in 2024.

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