Joint venture and Nextel ownership
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.[8] Boost Mobile then became a subsidiary of the merged company, Sprint Nextel Corporation.
Sprint ownership
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.[9]
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.[10] 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.[11] 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.[12]
At the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show, Boost Mobile announced it would begin to offer a new unlimited plan using Sprint's CDMA network.[13] Sprint also acquired fellow prepaid wireless provider Virgin Mobile USA in 2010both 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.[14]
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.[15][16]
Dish Network ownership
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.[17] 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.[18] 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.[19][20]
To grow its wireless subscriber base, Dish acquired Ting Mobile on August 1, 2020,[21]
2023 ransomware attack
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.[27] 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.[28][29]
Service outages lasted for more than a month, with customers reporting wait times for customer service stretching to more than 14 hours.[30] Full service was not restored until May 2023.[31]
EchoStar ownership
On August 8, 2023, Dish Network Corporation and EchoStar Corporation announced their intention to merge.[32][33] The two companies claimed that it would grant them additional resources and flexibility in deploying connectivity services. On December 31, 2023, EchoStar completed its acquisition of Dish Network, including its wireless division.[34]
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.[35]
