Boost Mobile

History

After founding Boost Mobile in Australia and New Zealand in 2000, Peter Adderton and Kirk 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.

Sprint Corporation acquired Nextel Communications in 2006, leaving Boost Mobile as 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.

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.^[6] 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.^[7] 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.^[8]

At the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show, Boost Mobile announced it would begin to offer a new unlimited plan using Sprint's CDMA network, costing $50 a month. For $10 more, Boost also offered an unlimited plan for the BlackBerry Curve 8830.^[9] Sprint would also acquire fellow prepaid wireless provider Virgin Mobile USA in 2010—both Boost and Virgin Mobile would be re-organized into a new group within Sprint, encompassing the two brands and other no-contract phone services offered by the company.^[10]

On June 20, 2010, Boost Mobile launched the Motorola i1 smartphone, Boost's first iDEN-based push-to-talk Android phone.^[11]

On October 14, 2010, Boost Mobile introduced Shrinkage, plan add-on that reduces monthly payment prices by $5 for every six months of on-time payments.^[12]

On April 5, 2011, Boost Mobile announced the Samsung Galaxy Prevail, the company's first CDMA-based Android offering.

Boost Mobile debuted a new 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.^[13] On June 27, 2012, Boost Mobile announced it would release the BlackBerry Curve 9310 on July 10, for $100 outright, along with a new "BBM Unlimited" plan offering unlimited talk, text, and BlackBerry Messenger starting at $45 a month.^[14]

In March 2013, Boost Mobile released the HTC One SV and the ZTE-made Boost Force smartphone, the company's first device using Sprint's 4G LTE network.

Boost Mobile released the LG Optimus F7 on June 27, 2013, 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).

Boost Mobile's parent company decommissioned the iDEN network on June 30, 2013, at 12:01 am, most iDEN customers have been migrated to the Sprint CDMA network.

Due to monthly and daily plans becoming the norm in the prepaid market space, Boost Mobile, As of September 26, 2013, ceased its "Pay As You Go" plan.

On October 21, 2013, Boost Mobile announced that it would offer the new iPhone 5s, along with the iPhone 5c; set to be available in select stores on November 8, 2013.^[15] In addition, the iPhone 4S was also made available.

On May 19, 2014, Boost Mobile released the Samsung Galaxy S5 at a starting price of $599 USD, making it the first flagship smartphone to be released along with the same time frame as contract phone companies.

On December 23, 2014, Boost Mobile released the Lumia 635, its first smartphone using Microsoft's Windows Phone mobile operating system.

On July 14, 2015, Boost Mobile launched the NETGEAR Fuse along with no-contract Wi-Fi Hotspot plans, its first Mobile Wi-Fi Hotspot device.^[16]

Marketing

This independent retailer located in Manhattan offers products and services from several Sprint-owned prepaid brands, including Boost Mobile.

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 Fat Joe, Master Shake, Eve, Travis Barker, Kanye West, Travis Pastrana, Ludacris, Richard "Rip" Hamilton, Nick Cannon, and The Game and used the slang slogan "Where you at?" 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. 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.^[17]

On January 20, 2010, according to the Wall Street Journal, Boost Mobile's 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. The commercial was directed by comedy duo Tim & Eric.

Boost runs the Boost Mobile Freestyle Motocross Tour/Team, which also makes stops at select NASCAR events throughout the country, as NASCAR's title sponsor is Sprint Nextel (Boost's parent company).

Sponsorships

The Boost Mobile-sponsored NASCAR stock car of Travis Pastrana in 2012

Boost Mobile regularly sponsors sports teams and sporting events. Boost Mobile have sponsored the RockCorps since 2005, have been marquee sponsor of the WNBA, sponsored the surfing event ASP World Tour until 2008, and sponsored the show Hot Import Nights.

Athletes sponsored by Boost include Kelly Slater, Makua Rothman, Jamie O'Brien, Dane Reynolds, Kolohe Andino, Sunny Garcia, Paul "P-Rod" Rodriguez, Josh Hansen, Keir Dillon, Danny Kass, Pierre-Luc Gagnon, Quinton "Rampage" Jackson, Danica Patrick and Travis Pastrana.

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)

As of November 2016, Boost Mobile, like its sister company Virgin Mobile, allows customers to bring their own device if it supports Sprint's CDMA/LTE networks (aside from Pixel/Nexus devices). SIM cards for BYOD devices can be ordered free of charge from Boost Mobile customer service or can be purchased from most Boost Mobile locations.

Sprint & T-Mobile US Merger

After failed mergers in past years, the Sprint Corporation and T-Mobile USA have once again agreed to another merger of the two entities. As a result, customers under both companies prepaid brands (Boost Mobile, Virgin Mobile, and MetroPCS) have feared that they will not be considered if the merger were to go through. In Mid-Late 2018, T-Mobile and Sprint announced that prepaid brands will not be discontinued whatsoever if and when the merger goes through. The two companies plan to permanently discontinue Sprint’s old and outdated CDMA 1x and CDMA 3G networks in order to make sure that the two networks could be compatible with each other. According to T-Mobile, over 20 million Sprint Customers will already be compatible with T-Mobile’s 4G LTE network. The goal of the merger is to create and be able to deploy a fast and nationwide 5G network so they can properly challenge Verizon’s and AT&T’s moves into the 5G space. As of September 2018, the merger still has to be approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ).