Dish Closes on Boost, a Key Condition of T-Mobile/Sprint

Its $1.4 billion purchase of Sprint's Boost Mobile complete, Dish Network is now in the retail wireless marketplace, it said Wednesday. It said it would keep the Boost brand, and reinstituted a shrinking payments plan. It said its "$hrink-It!" plan starts at $45 a month for 15 GB and goes down by $5 after three on-time payments and another $5 after six on-time payments. It said Boost's previous shrinking payments offering ended in July 2014.

Dish said it's introducing a $35 a month 10 GB plan that includes unlimited talk and text. Some 9.3 million customers are involved in the divestiture, T-Mobile said.

Dish's purchase of Sprint's pre-paid business was one of the government conditions for T-Mobile's Sprint acquisition. In recent weeks, there had been some uncertainty this divestiture would close.

This "fulfills a commitment that T-Mobile and Sprint made to" DOJ and the FCC "as part of their merger process," T-Mobile said. “We just checked an important milestone," said T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert. "T-Mobile followed through on fulfilling one of the most significant commitments we made as part of this merger process."