Boost Mobile

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Not to be confused with Bootmobile.
Boost Tel Pty Limited
Private
Industry Wireless telecommunications
Founded 2000; 24 years ago (2000)
Founder Peter Adderton
Headquarters Sydney, Australia
Area served
 Australia
Website boost.com.au
Boost Worldwide, Inc.
Subsidiary
Industry Wireless telecommunications
Founded 2001; 23 years ago (2001)
Founder Peter Adderton, Kirt McMaster
Headquarters Irvine, California, United States
Area served
 United States
Key people
 Andre Smith, Vice-President[1]
Parent Sprint Corporation
Website boostmobile.com

Boost Mobile is a brand of wireless service used by two independent operators in Australia and the United States. In Australia, Boost Tel Pty Ltd. operates as a MVNO using the Telstra network. In the United States, Boost Worldwide, Inc. is headquartered in Irvine, California, and is a subsidiary of Sprint Corporation. The Boost Mobile brand was founded in 2000 by Peter Adderton in Australia and New Zealand.

In Australia and New Zealand

History

Peter Adderton founded Boost Mobile in Australia and New Zealand in 2000.

Australian wireless provider Boost Tel Pty Limited offers mobile service under the Boost Mobile brand. Up until January 21, 2013, Boost branded services were provided by the Optus network. Optus has licensed the Boost brand since the brand's launch in 2000.

In 2012, Optus decided to end its business relationship with Boost Tel Pty Ltd. In response, Boost entered into a deal with network competitor Telstra.[2] After 20 January 2013, all existing Boost customers will be converted to Optus customers and will continue to receive services on the Optus network.[3] On March 7, Boost Tel Pty Ltd. began to offer products and services under the Boost Pre-paid Mobile brand as an MVNO hosted on the Telstra Next G network.[4]

Boost Mobile in New Zealand was a subsidiary of Telecom New Zealand. The Boost Mobile brand was discontinued in New Zealand as of November 2007.

Marketing criticism

In June 2010, Boost Mobile launched a viral marketing campaign that purported to identify text messaging disorders in order to bring attention to Boost Mobile's offer of 100 texts for one dollar. One Australian television program, Media Watch, criticized both the campaign itself and certain Australian media outlets that had failed to uncover the underlying marketing campaign, reporting the disorders as straight news.[5]

Boost Mobile cited an academic paper co-authored by Dr. Shari Walsh of the Queensland University of Technology. However, Dr. Walsh stated that her paper did not identify any texting disorders and that Boost Mobile was not accurately representing her research.[6]

In the United States

History

After founding Boost Mobile in Australia and New Zealand in 2000, Peter Adderton, Kirt McMaster & Craig Cooper 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, it 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.[7] 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.[8] 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.[9]

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.[10] 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.[11]

On June 20, 2010, Boost Mobile launched the Motorola i1 smartphone, Boost's first iDEN-based push-to-talk Android phone.[12]

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.[13]

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.[14] 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.[15]

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 12:01am, 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, decided to cease offering its "Pay As You Go" plan.

On October 21, 2013, Boost Mobile announced that it will begin to offer the new iPhone 5s, along with the iPhone 5c; set to be available in select stores on November 8, 2013.[16] 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 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.[17]

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 originally 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 Miranda,Shaun 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.[citation needed] Boost have also used Indy Car driver Danica Patrick in a commercial.

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.[18]

On January 20, 2010, according to the Wall Street Journal,[citation needed] 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).[citation needed]

Sponsorships

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

Boost Mobile regularly sponsors sports teams and sporting events.[citation needed] 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.[citation needed] 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.[citation needed]

Lack of SIM support

As of November 2015, similar to Virgin Mobile USA, many Boost phones are capable of connecting to Sprint's LTE network, where all phone provisioning can effectively be accomplished through the SIM cards alone. Nonetheless, Boost not only does not sell any SIM cards by themselves, but even specifically disallows any third-party phones (like the unlocked Nexus 5 or Nexus 6) to be brought onto their network, even if the customer does acquire a SIM card from an MVNO like Ting on their own (since, as of November 2015, Sprint themselves does not sell any SIM cards, either), and has their CDMA ESN (electronic serial number) ready (the traditional way by which provisioning of the phones takes place, still disallowed by Boost for third-party phones).

See also

References

  1. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ Boost Mobile to resell Telstra's Next G network
  3. ↑ http://www.telstra.com.au/abouttelstra/media-centre/announcements/boost-mobile-announcement-clarification.xml
  4. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. ↑ http://newsroom.boostmobile.com/press-release/products-offers/boost-mobile-offer-iphone-5s-and-iphone-5c-november-8
  17. ↑ " Boost Mobile Netgear Fuse and new Wi-Fi Hotspot plans available now ", Prepaid Mobile Phone Reviews, 2015-07-14
  18. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

  1. ↑ http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/sprint-updates-virgins-prepaid-pricing-options-kills-paylo-broadband2go-sub/2016-02-02
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