- Boost Mobile is positioning itself as the next challenger brand in wireless
- It’s promising faster and more reliable 5G services that are up to 40% cheaper than rivals
- But at least one analyst questions Boost’s ability to go up against the Big 3
This marks the first holiday season where Boost Mobile will take on AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon with a unified prepaid/postpaid brand strategy.
That’s right. Boost Mobile is positioning itself as the next challenger brand in wireless, which sounds absurd when you consider Boost Mobile has been steadily losing customers the past four years. For most of its life, Boost Mobile was a prepaid brand, but last summer, parent company EchoStar ditched the Boost Infinite moniker and combined the prepaid and postpaid under one Boost Mobile umbrella.
Now, it’s go time. Boost Mobile says it’s offering “unbeatable deals,” including an offer for $1,000 off the latest iPhone 16 or Samsung Galaxy devices with Boost’s Infinite Access plan. Customers will be able to upgrade to a new device every year – no trade-in required. It’s also offering a free year of service with the purchase of any smartphone over $299, as well as savings on the new $94.99 Summit 5G, a device exclusive to Boost Mobile.
One of the big reasons it’s able to offer these super low-cost plans – up to 40% cheaper than other national carriers – is the way it built its cloud-native 5G network using Open Radio Access Network (RAN) technology. Open RAN’s cost structure is lower than traditional network architectures, enabling it to pass the savings along.
“We’re focused on delivering what matters most to consumers,” Boost Mobile Chief Technology Officer Eben Albertyn told Fierce. “It's 5G performance, reliability and value at a fraction of the cost of the others. We're a challenger brand in wireless, and we're just getting started with what we’re going to do in the U.S. That’s about offering exceptional value on an absolutely world-class network.”
Boost insists it’s ready to challenge the big guns, pointing to a recent Ookla study that shows it’s delivering faster speeds than AT&T and Verizon, although it’s still slower than T-Mobile. Consumers can experience speeds of up to 1 Gbps when using newer devices like the iPhone 16 series and the Samsung Galaxy S24 on Boost Mobile’s network.
Boost still has MVNO agreements with AT&T and T-Mobile, but it’s increasingly adding customers to its own 5G network and emphasizing its role as a mobile network operator rather than an MVNO. It finished the second quarter with about 7.3 million subscribers, down from the more than 9 million it started with when Dish bought it from T-Mobile in 2020.
The FCC in September granted an extension to EchoStar for its 5G network build, so instead of a deadline of June 14, 2025, EchoStar has until December 14, 2026, to meet certain buildout requirements that are tied to its spectrum licenses. But it’s not sitting idle. Boost Mobile’s network already covers 70% of the U.S. population and by the end of 2024, it will cover 80%, Albertyn said.
Boost Mobile is committed to deploying 24,000 towers by June 14, 2025 – an increase from its 15,000-tower obligation for 2023.
“We are well on our way to meeting this goal, with more than 20,000 sites on air with thousands of additional sites under construction,” he said.
Boost needs to focus on marketing
That’s all fine, but while Boost emphasizes its great – albeit rather empty – network, analysts say the network isn’t Boost’s problem. It’s the retail and marketing piece that’s lacking.
“There’s no consistent marketing campaign, no advertising that I’m aware of, whereas when you turn on the TV or go on the internet, the larger carrier ads are ubiquitous,” said Recon Analytics lead analyst Roger Entner. “It’s a sales and marketing failure, and it’s a consistent sales and marketing failure.”
To its credit, Boost kicked off a national ad and marketing campaign in July, with new ads coming out across broadcast, digital, streaming, social and radio through January 2025. The "We Built a Network" campaign and follow-up iPhone ads were directed by "Portlandia" writer and director Jonathan Krisel.
As for wooing customers away from the Big 3, Entner is skeptical. “For a lot of these guys, they are not seen as a credible competitor. That’s what it comes down to,” he told Fierce.
Boost’s most aggressive rivals are Mint Mobile, which, like Boost, was an MVNO before it was bought by T-Mobile, as well as Metro by T-Mobile and the AT&T-owned Cricket Wireless, he said. Those are all squarely in the prepaid space.
iPhones don’t come cheap
Granted, Boost scored a coup when Apple agreed to support Band 70 in the iPhone, but that also comes with some “pretty hefty” volume commitments, Entner said.
“They need to sell these phones, and if they don’t sell the phones, they have to pay for them anyway,” he said. “I don’t know how high that volume commitment is but from what I hear, these volume commitments are pretty steep, especially when Apple puts in a band that they didn’t put in before.”
EchoStar CEO Hamid Akhavan acknowledged Boost’s many challenges during the company’s Q2 conference call, including a scarcity of physical stores – its rivals have about five times more stores, he said, which is why it’s focused on digital experiences. He also talked about Boost’s determination to “elevate ourselves” the second half of 2024 to compete with the big postpaid carriers.
The transition to a single brand is still new so it’s unlikely to have made a big dent in Boost’s subscriber numbers, but EchoStar reports its third-quarter results tomorrow, so we’ll soon hear whether it’s moving in the right direction.
Update 11/11/2024 3 p.m. ET: This story was updated with information about Boost’s national ad campaign.