Boost Mobile was officially purchased from T-Mobile by the DISH Network on July 1st, 2020. T-Mobile was required to offload the brand in order to gain regulatory approval to merge with Sprint. After closing the deal with T-Mobile, DISH made immediate changes to Boost Mobile highlighted by the release of a couple of new plans. One of the plans, $hrink-It, has already been featured in a new TV commercial.
Next week, DISH will refresh the Boost Mobile brand once again. According to Sneed Mobile Tech (SMT), there will be several new phone plans announced and some current plan deals will no longer be offered.
New Boost Mobile Plans Coming August 7th, 2020
The new plans that will be announced next week will target the budget end of the wireless market. The updated plans will start at just $10/month. All plans will include unlimited talk and text with the difference between each plan being the amount of high-speed data that is included with it. Plan details with the data differences between each are described below.
- $10/month - 1GB high-speed data
- $15/month - 2GB high-speed data
- $25/month - 5GB high-speed data
The plans will make pretty good choices for those that don't need a lot of data, but they aren't without flaws. SMT says that the new plans will not be eligible for any device or add-a-line promos. It is not known if the new plans are hard-capped or if they come with unlimited 2G data after their high-speed data caps get reached. The plans will be available on Boost's expanded network which is T-Mobile.
According to SMT, the following plans are said to be getting retired on 8/7/2020.
- 3 lines for $100 (unlimited everything with 30GB of mobile hotspot data per line and SD video streaming)
- 4 lines for $100 (unlimited everything with 1GB of mobile hotspot per line and SD video streaming)
- 4 lines for $120 (unlimited everything with 30GB of mobile hotspot per line and HD video streaming)
The plans being retired are all listed as limited-time promotional offerings.
Update 7/29/2020: SMT is now reporting that Boost Mobile is going to come out with new family plans. From how they are priced, it looks like they will be replacement offerings for the discontinued promotional family plans described above. The new family plan offerings will be priced as follows:
- 2 lines for $60
- 3 lines for $90
- 4 lines for $120
Each plan will include unlimited talk, text, and data with each line getting their first 12GB of data per month at high-speeds before throttling to 2G data speeds. Unfortunately, the new family plan offerings will likely offer less value to most consumers compared to the outgoing promotional plans with the exception of the 2 lines for $60 plan. Boost doesn't currently offer 2 lines for $60.
Editor's Take
What's interesting about Boost Mobile's new phone plans is that they are priced to take on T-Mobile's Prepaid Connect plans. Boost Mobile's upcoming $15 and $25 plans will be identical in price and data allotments to T-Mobile's Connect plans with one major difference. T-Mobile will increase a subscriber's monthly data allotment by 500MB for every year they remain on the plan for up to five years, all at no extra charge. T-Mobile's Connect plans do not have a $10 price point, so Boost Mobile appears to be doing one better in that regard.
Boost's updated plans will allow the brand to compete at a wide range of price points and thus to service the needs of a larger portion of the market. But I'm still concerned they are making a mistake by no longer offering free phones to switchers that signup for unlimited family plans. I also don't like the change they recently made to their quality of service guidelines which may limit their "unlimited plan offerings" to a maximum high-speed data allotment of 35GB before throttling to 2G data speeds.
You can see what Sneed Mobile Tech had to say about the new and yet to be released plans in the video below.