Dish Wireless announced its early access beta, starting today, for the company’s new Boost Infinite postpaid wireless service, which sells for $25 a month, not including taxes and fees.
The beta has limited spots and is available for a limited time, but it marks the first time Boost is officially and formally moving into the postpaid business, said Boost Mobile CEO Stephen Stokols.
How’s that going? “It’s been a long time in the making,” he said, as testing was ongoing to make sure all systems were ready to go for today's big launch.
Indeed, it’s been in the works for a while. Earlier this year, executives were planning to launch Boost Infinite this fall. They even named the first 25 markets over the summer. But that didn’t happen.
Dish isn’t saying how many people will be allowed into the beta program, but they already have more people interested in learning more about Boost Infinite than they have available spots.
The Boost Infinite $25 a month plan includes unlimited talk, text and data. As part of the beta, “there may be an occasion to throttle the speeds” after 30 GB, a spokesperson said. Customers can bring their own iOS or Android device or purchase or finance a 5G smartphone from Boost Infinite.
The beta is being described as in the stage where they’re “running water through the pipes” to see if there are any leaks or other problems.
The beta will be available nationwide, using the networks of MVNO partners AT&T and T-Mobile, Stokols said. It’s not the same as Project Genesis, which is more of a network beta test for early adopters using Dish’s own network.
Disruption is the name of the game
With Boost Infinite, “we’re looking to take on the Big 3. We’re going directly after AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile,” Stokols told Fierce. “We’re coming out with a proposition that is disruptive” compared to what the others are doing.
“There’s 300 million subscribers across those networks. We’re not going after a niche here. We’re going after a mass market play and we’re going to take a big chunk of share,” he added.
The way it’s going to do that is through “no BS” and simplicity, he said. Boost Infinite’s pricing is going to be more than 50% lower than what the established carriers offer for a single line, he said. “We’re $25 a month,” for a single line and “for a lifetime.”
“We didn’t want to have an aggressive price point. We wanted to have a disruptive price point,” he said. “Less than 50% is where you get disruptive.”
Boost can offer lower prices because parent company Dish is not spending the kind of money the incumbents are doling out, he said. It’s building a new kind of cloud-native 5G open network that is software-centric and not as expensive as traditional networks.
For the beta, it will be eSIM only for iOS devices that support it. The Boost Infinite commercial launch, now due to happen in the first quarter of 2023, will include support for eSIM across Android and iOS.
The expectation is that when Boost Infinite launches commercially, it will include access to Dish’s own 5G network, offering three in total where the customer’s phone selects the best available connection. In the OSS/BSS department, Boost already has been moving off T-Mobile’s platform onto its own OSS/BSS, and that gives Boost much more flexibility and the ability to move faster, Stokols said.
There are no stores involved in the Boost Infinite beta launch; it’s online only, with sign-ups available at beta.BoostInfinite.com.
T-Mobile set out to upend the wireless industry several years ago with its “un-carrier” strategy.
Is Boost Infinite trying to “out un-carrier” the un-carrier? Stokols isn’t saying that.
But he did say the “un-carrier” is now the incumbent and that AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile are all basically using the same marketing tactics.
“We are going to be a challenger and do things differently,” he said.