T-Mobile wants to lure back Boost customers it sold to Dish

T-Mobile is introducing a new prepaid promotion with incentives for customers on other prepaid MVNOs to switch to Metro by T-Mobile, including waiving switching fees, a discount on an unlimited plan with 5G, and a trade-in offer for a new 5G phone. In other words, it’s doing exactly what it told regulators it wouldn’t do when it acquired Sprint a year ago. It is a direct pitch to lure Boost Mobile customers to T-Mobile’s prepaid brand—the same customers it was ordered to sell to Dish with the intention of setting the company up as a fourth wireless carrier to replace Sprint. It’s also what Dish warned might be coming in a plea to the Federal Communications Commission earlier this year. The promotion appears to specifically appeal to Boost customers on Sprint’s old CDMA network — a network T-Mobile owns and operates and announced it would be shutting down on an unusually aggressive timeline. This leaves many Boost customers in need of a device upgrade by January 1st, 2022, which T-Mobile is happily offering to facilitate if they switch to Metro.