Boost Mobile

[Almighty1]

The piece of mail I got yesterday from Dish concerning Boost stats "auto-pay and active Dish subscription required".

That is on their webpage for the DISH $15 plan.

MyDISH

Manage your DISH account online. Pay your bill, view programming, upgrade services, and access customer support at MyDISH.

my.dish.com

What it doesn't say is if one has to maintain the DISH subscription or not after one signs up to keep the $15 pricing. Only way to know the answer to that question is from someone who signed up while having DISH and then cancelled DISH later.

So it seems this is basically the Boost Unlimited plan but with the $10 discount for having autopay and DISH and of course that link goes to this:

If they do indeed charge taxes, regulatory fees or surcharges, it's a YMMV situation as it varies by location. Their policy seems to say they charge taxes and fees.

Taxes and Fees | Boost Mobile

Looking for details on what Boost Mobile charges for taxes and fees? We don't do hidden fees, but there are some taxes we can't get rid of.

help.boostmobile.com

 

[tanman]

I'm in Vermont Boost is $15.10 per line. Ooma has a base line of free. Last I checked it was costing me about $5 in taxes and fees(still a bargain)It used to be next to nothing. When I had ATT postpaid fees and taxes were a good chunk.Vermont(like many states) likes to tax anything that moves so I'm happy with 10 cents. I dont expect it to be 10 cents forever.

 

[dishstaller]

My concern is what happens if Boost Mobile goes belly up.

That's what kept me from considering pushing this product. Plus, I got into the cell phone business back when Motorola bag phones were all the rage.....a few years in that business and I decided I would never deal with cell phones ever again.

 

[Almighty1]

I'm in Vermont Boost is $15.10 per line. Ooma has a base line of free. Last I checked it was costing me about $5 in taxes and fees(still a bargain)It used to be next to nothing. When I had ATT postpaid fees and taxes were a good chunk.Vermont(like many states) likes to tax anything that moves so I'm happy with 10 cents. I dont expect it to be 10 cents forever.

In California, it seems to depend on the city as San Francisco where I am is close to $7.00 per line for taxes and fees because the 911 San Francisco fee is like $6.50 while Oakland, California is $1.00 per line. The taxes and fees seems to be the same regardless of the Mobile Wireless carrier if they were not included in the advertised price. The $7.00 seemed less before I had Xfinity Mobile which is $30/month for primary line and $0.00 then $12.00 then $20.00 for the second line as I had been with Verizon Wireless formerly GTE MobilNet and GTE Wireless since January 1996 with a single line and then two lines at $150 total for two lines so the % was less. $7.00 on $15.00 would alredy be almost 50% in taxes and fees.

 

[HipKat]

My concern is what happens if Boost Mobile goes belly up.

What happens if any company goes belly up?

 

[slow_poke_pete]

It does. I got mail from Dish concerning Boost Mobile yesterday. It comes with 30GB of 5G/4G LTE data also. There are $40/40GB and a $50/50GB plans also. The $40 and $50 plans come with a hotspot. The phone number shown for this is 833-610-3028. My concern is what happens if Boost Mobile goes belly up.

My concern is what happens if Boost Mobile goes belly up.

why is that a concern move on to the next thing

 

[EarDemon]

The main concern would be what happens to your phone number. The phone number that not only do many people and organizations have, but is also used for SMS MFA, even though better options exist but aren't always implemented. You can counter that with use Google Voice or something similar and take the provider out the equation.

While you would hope there would be a port out window, it depends on how tied you are to your number, and how paranoid you are. The only thing I can think to compare it to was years ago when there were a ton of rinky dink low cost VoIP providers and bunch went belly up.

 

[dishstaller]

The main concern would be what happens to your phone number.

Ding...ding...ding. We have a winner.

 

[HipKat]

If someone ports their Verizon/AT&T/T-Mobile number into the $15 Dish/Boost plan and Boost later actually fails, the normal outcome is not "your phone number is gone."

FCC rules allow consumers switching providers to keep their number, and Boost itself has a defined port-out process. You get the Boost account information and a port-out PIN and move the number to another carrier.
Even if a carrier actually ceased operations, disconnected residential numbers cannot immediately be thrown back into the pool. FCC numbering rules require at least a 45-day aging period before reassignment.

If Boost were genuinely headed for liquidation, there would almost certainly be an orderly customer transition first. We're talking about roughly 7.4 million wireless subscribers as of June 30, 2026. That subscriber base has enormous value. Somebody like AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, or another MVNO/operator would have every incentive to acquire those accounts, and the numbers would normally transfer along with the customers or customers would be given time to port elsewhere.

 

[tanman]

Ironically when years ago I dropped my legacy land line provider for Ooma they couldn't port my number back then.Just as well because the number of spam calls dropped dramatically as I was no longer in a phone book.
Last I checked I'm still in the phone book under that number. Great number-easy to remember. 8768

 

[dishstaller]

Great number-easy to remember. 8768

My Wife's cell number ends with -0000.

 

[charlesrshell]

My Wife's cell number ends with -0000.

My number ends with -5555. Wish I had it when I was single!!

 

[Bobby]

Ironically when years ago I dropped my legacy land line provider for Ooma they couldn't port my number back then.Just as well because the number of spam calls dropped dramatically as I was no longer in a phone book.
Last I checked I'm still in the phone book under that number. Great number-easy to remember. 8768

I had no difficulty whatsoever porting my landline phone number over to Ooma in 2022. I have a friend who ported his landline number over to Ooma literally decades ago.

 

[JSheridan]

IIRC when Charlie sold all that spectrum to AT&T they made a deal to have Boost moved up in priority on the AT&T towers and to pretty much assure that Boost will survive one way or another no matter what happens to Dish or Charlie.

 

[dishstaller]

I had no difficulty whatsoever porting my landline phone number over to Ooma in 2022. I have a friend who ported his landline number over to Ooma literally decades ago.

I did want to mention that Ooma does charge for porting a number now. Seems like it was about $40.

 

[Bobby]

I did want to mention that Ooma does charge for porting a number now. Seems like it was about $40.

That is true, unless you sub to their annual Premiere Plan then it is waived. I happen to sub to that plan so I didn't have to pay it.

 

[Almighty1]

My concern is what happens if Boost Mobile goes belly up.

why is that a concern move on to the next thing

My concern is what happens to the $15 rate if Boost Mobile continues to exist but DISH is gone as one will no longer be a active DISH subscriber and Boost at that point would not be part of DISH anyways.

 

[Almighty1]

My experience with porting are as follows:

From Verizon Wireless where I had 2 lines on a family plan to Xfinity Mobile in September 2018
Line 1 - I have had since January 6, 1996 when it was known as GTE Mobilnet which later became known as GTE Wireless before being known as Verizon Wireless after the BellAtlantic and GTE merger.
Line 2 - I added that after it was Verizon Wireless sometime between 2003-2005

LIne 2 ported without problems
Line 1 would fail to port because it was refused by Verizon Wireless. Verizon Wireless could not even see the port request and told me to try again and ofcourse it failed again when Xfinity Mobile tried again. Xfinity's Social Media Team as in the Comcast Home non-mobile team was able to successfully port it by adding the line as a new line using the number instead of porting.

For my landline from AT&T/SBC California, the way I ported was by porting to Google Fi first by purchasing the Google Nexus 6p and then cancelling Google Fi service and porting to Google Voice. The reason for that is porting to Google Voice would cost $20 but porting from Google Fi to Google Voice is free. I returned the phone with shipping prepaid for a full refund and the cost for this was basically $0.10 for the prorated service for 1 day.

 

[HipKat]

My concern is what happens to the $15 rate if Boost Mobile continues to exist but DISH is gone as one will no longer be a active DISH subscriber and Boost at that point would not be part of DISH anyways.

The $15 deal is not contingent on you being a Dish customer. That's just what gets you the deal. You can quit Dish tomorrow and the $15 will remain

 

[dishdude]

I was driving through a rough area of Cleveland earlier tonight and saw this which is a pretty good representation of what people associate Boost with. Charlie really should have launched Dish or Sling Wireless, along with home 5G where they launched towers.