Thanks to a reader tip, BestMVNO has learned that Boss Wireless is shutting down. There's a banner on the provider's homepage that reads:
The brand formally known as Boss Revolution rebranded its mobile plans in 2021 to become Boss Wireless and a T-Mobile MVNO.
In early 2020 BestMVNO detailed new prepaid plans offered by Boss Revolution on the Sprint network. Boss Revolution was primarily known as a prepaid provider that offered international calling cards that could be found in stores such as Target and Kroger. The rebrand of its nationwide mobile plans to Boss Wireless was an attempt to better differentiate and market its nationwide prepaid wireless plans from its international calling card business. Boss Revolution remains a separate entity today and still offers calling cards and international money transfer services. The company regularly airs TV ads with several new ones launched this past April like the one shown below that targets Spanish-speaking audiences.
Unfortunately, outside of its 2021 press release announcing the rebrand, Boss Wireless failed to adequately market itself with seemingly little effort put into the business afterward. The parent company behind Boss Wireless continued to focus on Boss Revolution with new TV ads launched in 2021, 2023, and 2024 but nothing for Boss Wireless.
Boss Wireless phone plans also failed to provide consumers with great value. The MVNO's phone plans went somewhat backward in value between 2021 and today. In their 2021 product launch, Boss Wireless's flagship plan cost $50/month for 50GB of high-speed data while their second top plan was $40/month for 15GB of high-speed data. Fast forward to today with the company going out of business, their final flagship plan offering was $40/month with a downgrade to 12GB of high-speed data from 15GB in 2021. Boss Wireless did attempt to differentiate itself and lure customers in by offering a free month every 6 months after they made five consecutive monthly payments, but this effort was obviously a failure. The plans weren't marketed and didn't offer enough value.
It's unfortunate that another provider has to close down. But it also goes to show, as Jon Horovitz has written many times at BestMVNO, that you have to differentiate yourself from the market to succeed. Boss Wireless failed to do that and was lost in a sea of MVNOs offering similar products with better value.
“you have to differentiate yourself from the market to succeed. Boss Wireless failed to do that and was lost in a sea of MVNOs offering similar products with better value.”
Well, not exactly. Boss Wireless was one of if not the first MVNO to include all the junk fees into their price, so that what you see up-front is what you pay. They also offered that sixth month free or the equal value of the lowest plan off your sixth month, which is not done anywhere else. Today, I do seem to see several MVNO’s at least telling us that they include all taxes and fees in the price, but the plans I see look confusing at best, they want us to pay for 3 or 6 months ahead of time to get a reasonable price, or they tell us on one page that they have no hidden fees, but show all kinds of taxes and fees that are extra charges on another page, making us calculate those fees at checkout after entering all our billing information. The best I can say of this practice is that it is deceptive, although I have worse things I could say that I don’t want showing up here. Boss Wireless clearly differentiated itself from the sea of MVNO’s by being fully honest about its pricing, offering the value of the lowest plan purchase during a 5-month period off the current plan on the sixth month and by offering all customers the same prices regardless of the number of accounts they needed or the number of months they paid for in advance. This is really good for us, since they only offered monthly plans, so seeing them go away is not so costly as it could have been had we paid for six months to a year ahead of time last month, only to find that they are discontinuing service after next month. They really did have good value to offer, and the only thing they failed to do was to market it enough, if that is in fact a failure. Considering the fact that I have seen three to four MVNO’s start including the junk fees into their up-front pricing within the past year, I would say that Boss Wireless was in fact a trend setter in a good way. Now if all the others could take a few more pages out of the Boss Wireless playbook by eliminating all the up-front long-term advance payments and offering the same prices to everyone. We could use a bit more fully honest and transparent pricing as well, as Boss Wireless did.