Boost Mobile wants you to know that it’s a real carrier now, just like T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T, and not just a MVNO. The company’s own 5G towers now cover most of the U.S. population.

Boost Mobile started out as just another mobile virtual network operator, or MVNO for short, meaning it didn’t actually own any cell towers—it was renting network capacity from one of the major carriers. Over the past few years, the company has been building up its own cell network, which now “covers more than 70% of the U.S. population, with coverage across 99% of the country via roaming partners.”

This has been a roller coaster of branding and consolidations. Boost Mobile was previously owned by Sprint (and Nextel before that), but it was sold to Dish Network (yes, the TV company) as part of T-Mobile and Sprint’s merger in 2020. Dish also got some wireless spectrum and the ability to use T-Mobile’s network for a while. Dish’s shiny new 5G network finally went live in its first city in 2022, and it continued to expand to more regions throughout 2023 and 2024. Dish went through a few different names and plans centered around the network, and then EchoStar purchased Dish, so now it’s just “Boost Mobile’s network” owned by EchoStar.

If you’re a customer of Boost Mobile or Ting Mobile (EchoStar owns both), you may have already used one of Boost’s cell towers without knowing it. The company is still renting capacity on T-Mobile and AT&T, but if you’re in an area covered by Boost’s own towers, your phone will probably switch to those automatically. Presumably, Boost customers will use the company’s own towers more often as the network continues to expand.

Boost Mobile told How-To Geek, “Boost Mobile’s network is the first and only 5G standalone cloud-native Open RAN 5G network. With simultaneous four-carrier (4CC) downlink and two-carrier (2CC) uplink aggregation, Boost merged 100 MHz of spectrum across four spectrum channels, meaning Boost took four data highways and put them together into a massive superhighway where more traffic can move faster than before. Recent tests have shown 4CC peak speeds reaching up to 1 Gbps.”

Boost also announced some holiday deals, including a free year of service with the purchase of an iPhone 16 or Samsung Galaxy device (or any other phone over $229), and discounts on select budget 5G phones. You can learn more at the Boost Mobile website.

Source: Boost Mobile