Helium Mobile Touts 62k Subs, Adds Group Plans & Pixel Phones With Free Service

Helium Mobile, a startup that operates as both an MVNO and a carrier, has experienced a highly productive few months. At the end of April, Helium Foundation board member Arman Dezfuli-Arjomandi posted on X that Helium Mobile had added 62,463 subscribers since January 1. Of course, that number doesn't indicate how many of those adds are current subscribers. The company also started selling Google Pixel phones offering up to one year of free wireless service with the purchase of a phone. Helium Mobile is even testing the integration of its service on the AT&T network. And today, the company announced it's offering group plans. Customers can have up to 8 friends or family members on their accounts and each line gets its own allotment of 30GB of high-speed data.

Helium Mobile update:
- added a casual +62,463 unlimited plan subscribers since Jan 1
- causing nearly $3,000 of $HNT burn per day from their data usage on Wi-Fi hotspots
- preliminary integration testing with AT&T (223 million subscribers) and Google Orion for data offload… pic.twitter.com/tNrXu1KSU1

— Arman Dezfuli-Arjomandi ???? (@rawrmaan) April 28, 2024

Helium Mobile's Growth Has Been Fast And Furious

Helium Mobile's accomplishments are something to behold. The company debuted its wireless phone service last summer with Miami serving as its test market. A $5/month unlimited phone plan was offered. In November of 2023, Helium Mobile announced it would serve as an official partner of the University of Miami Athletics Department. It's a multi-season partnership offering special promotions to University of Miami Athletics fans and the greater Miami community.

Helium Mobile only launched nationwide in December 2023 with a $20/month unlimited plan that includes 30GB of high-speed data before throttling. The addition of 62k+ subscribers in the first four months of the year is a huge accomplishment that should draw the attention of major carriers, some of which have been struggling to retain prepaid subscribers.

Verizon Prepaid, for instance, lost 216K customers in 1Q24 while T-Mobile Prepaid lost 48k. Some of T-Mobile's prepaid losses may be attributed to customers migrating over to postpaid. AT&T managed to add 79k prepaid subscribers in the quarter. DISH Wireless brands which include Boost Mobile, and Gen Mobile among others, have been losing subscribers nearly every quarter since DISH entered the wireless business in 2020. In 4Q23, DISH's parent company Echostar announced that it had lost 123k subscribers. Echostar has not announced its 1Q24 results yet.

Contrary to the companies just described, neither Helium Mobile nor its parent company, Nova Labs are publicly traded. So they may have more legal room to define and describe how many subscribers they have. But however you want to look at it, their growth trajectory seems phenomenal to have achieved in such a short period of time. Now the difficulty may be in retaining subscribers long-term while continuing to grow their "people-powered" network.

Google Pixel Offers

Helium Mobile is selling three Google Pixel phones and offering different amounts of free wireless service depending on the device purchased. Below is a list summarizing their offers.

• Google Pixel 7a $424 - includes four months of free service
• Google Pixel 8 $699 - includes 9 months of free service
• Google Pixel 8 Pro $639 - includes 12 months of free service. Offer is sold out at press time

Helium Mobile does not disclose if the devices are locked to its network or not.