New Street Research analyst Philip Burnett activated a new iPhone 15 Pro on Dish Wireless’ Boost Infinite service, and he said the process worked smoothly and the coverage seems good.
Burnett said he signed up for Boost’s new “Infinite Access for iPhone” plan, which provides a $1,000 discount off the iPhone 15 Pro and unlimited service for $60 per month. Wave7 Research analyst Jeff Moore said there is a marketing campaign supporting the new service with two TV ads and one radio ad.
Burnett said he was happy to not have to visit a store for the service activation. “I filled out a few forms online and the iPhone was overnighted by UPS. Activation only required pressing a few buttons on the phone (no physical SIMs). I’ve yet to need Boost Infinite customer support for anything,” wrote Burnett.
However, he noted that he may have just been lucky because there are people on a reddit forum who are expressing frustration with problems.
For instance, one person ran into problems porting his number to the new iPhone on Boost Infinite. “When I tried to activate the phone it told me there was an error and to contact boost infinite,” said the post. “I was with a representative for about three hours. IPhone won’t active and I’m stuck on the sim not-supported page. The customer service guys can’t seem to fix this issue.”
While the vast majority of activations, at any carrier, may go smoothly, it’s the ones that require competent human support that can damage a carriers’ reputation.
Burnett said phone calls and texts immediately worked well on the Infinite Access for iPhone service with acceptable speeds of about 80 Mbps deep inside an apartment in New York City and about 400 Mbps when outdoors.
Burnett determined that his Boost Infinite service in New York was running on T-Mobile’s network. Dish has struck wholesale deals with both T-Mobile and AT&T for its mobile services to run on those networks in places where Dish’s own 5G network doesn’t yet have capacity.
To check for network information, Burnett dialed *3001#12345#* and pressed the call button, which opens the hidden screen on underlying network information. Based on the revealed Public Land Mobile Network (PLMN) code, he deduced that his iPhone 15 was running on T-Mobile’s network in New York.
He said, “This confirms that iPhone 15 can only connect to Dish’s actual network natively when it is in a market with [voice over new radio] VoNR. Dish’s New York network does not yet have VoNR, while T-Mobile’s network does. However, Dish is working to deploy VoNR, and it may be available in New York, soon.
Boost Infinite for $25 per month
In July, Dish said that it would use Amazon as a retail outlet to sell its Boost Infinite postpaid phone service. Amazon Prime members are automatically pre-qualified to sign up for Boost Infinite’s basic service, which costs $25 per month plus taxes.
LightShed Partners analyst Walter Piecyk tweeted on Sunday that he was using the Boost Infinite $25 service and getting fine results.