Image: Dish
Dish now owns Boost Mobile, bringing Dish — after years of speculation — into the consumer wireless market where it can start to compete with Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile.
Boost was previously part of Sprint, which is now owned by T-Mobile. T-Mobile was required to sell Boost in order to get federal approval for its acquisition of Sprint, which closed in April.
As part of the agreement, Dish is paying $1.4 billion for Boost and other Sprint prepaid assets. Dish also secured access to T-Mobile’s network for seven years, allowing its subscribers to use T-Mobile’s network while Dish builds out its own 5G service.
Dish says the new Boost Mobile has more than 9 million subscribers. It’s a start, but it means Boost is incredibly tiny compared…