Dish acquires Gen Mobile, boosting its Emergency Broadband Benefit play

Dish Network’s Boost Mobile announced plans to acquire Gen Mobile, a Los Angeles (CA)-based prepaid mobile service provider specializing in serving “cost-conscious” consumers. Boost will be acquiring an undisclosed number of subscribers through the acquisition, but Stephen Stokols, who heads Boost and will oversee the Gen Mobile brand, said a key thing is the connection to bridging the digital divide. Dish is starting to move upmarket with Boost Mobile, but at the same time, “we don’t want to ignore the under-served market,” he said. According to Stokols, there’s an influx of money going into things like the federal government’s Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB) program that are meant to bridge the digital divide. Gen Mobile, an MVNO using T-Mobile's network, is an established brand with distribution and the right team to more aggressively get into that space, and that’s an economic demographic that Dish wants to reach with lower priced plans – say with $10, $15 or $20 monthly plans.