Texting delays mar popularity of $50 Boost plan

[ComicalMoodyDan]

Texting delays mar popularity of $50 Boost plan
By PETER SVENSSON, AP

NEW YORK -A new $50 unlimited-calling plan sold under the Boost brand has been a badly needed success story for Sprint Nextel Corp., luring hundreds of thousands of new customers, by industry estimates.

But dealers and customers report widespread problems with texting on the Boost network. Messages are frequently delayed by hours, in many cases reaching their recipients early in the morning.

"That kind of kills the point of using the text messaging feature," said Daniel Michael, a firefighter in Salisbury, N.C., who also works at a cell phone store. He and his wife signed up for Boost Mobile around the end of February, and use their phones to text their children, but often get delays of three or four hours.

"There's a huge deficiency in the text messaging and multimedia messaging," said John Kim, an independent dealer who has a Boost Mobile store in the Dallas area. He warns new customers about the problems, and tests the system by sending himself text messages.
"I got five text messages at 4 o'clock in the morning that I sent myself nine hours before," he said.

He's been signing up 10 to 12 new customers a day on the plan, three or four times the number that came in before the Boost Unlimited plan was introduced in January. But a lot of them come back, "very irritated" about the text messaging problems, he said.

"This trend of a lot of people signing up to Boost is going to disappear really quickly if they don't resolve the texting issue," Kim said.

The new Boost Mobile plan uses Sprint's Nextel network, which uses a different underlying technology than the main Sprint network. Nextel users have complained of occasionally delayed text messaging for years, but the network's main selling point has been the walkie-talkie-like "push to talk" capability, used by work crews and emergency responders. Now the new Boost plan has opened the network to a new category of customers, for whom text messaging is more important.

John Votava, a spokesman for Boost, said the texting problems are due to the influx of new customers, and denied that there are long-standing problems with the Nextel network.
"The popularity of Boost Mobile caught us off guard. It overwhelmed our system," he said. The company has been working "day and night" to fix the problems, and aims to have the system "much improved" by next week, Votava said.

Analysts expect Sprint to report Monday that Boost attracted somewhere around half a million subscribers in the first quarter, which would be a rare piece of good news for the company. The additions from Boost are not expected to outnumber defections from Sprint as a whole, however.

The Boost plan was partly a response to the network expansions of MetroPCS Communications Inc. and Leap Wireless International Inc. They have long offered unlimited calling for about $50 per month in limited areas, but in recent months they've moved into big cities in the Northeast, greatly increasing their possible customers. Virgin Mobile later responded with its own $50 unlimited prepaid plan, and T-Mobile USA started offering long-term customers a similar plan to keep them.

The experience of Jibril Sulaiman, who runs a cell phone store in Pensacola, Fla., supports the notion that the Boost network is congested. Messages he sends early in the morning go through with minimal delays, but those sent later in the day are sometimes held up for five hours. One of his employees who has a Boost phone activated another phone on another service just for texting, he said.

Despite the texting problems, it seems most Boost subscribers aren't giving up. In North Carolina, Michael said calls and the push-to-talk function have worked flawlessly.
Bryan Scheiber in Grosse Ile, Mich., signed up for Boost Unlimited in February, and has been mostly happy with it. The call quality is better than on his previous carrier, AT&T Inc., he said. He's woken up to find four text messages that were sent to him the previous day, but he's not a big texter.

"For the price," he said, "you can't complain."

Texting delays mar popularity of $50 Boost plan - AOL Money & Finance

[Kalimotxo]

I agree - the text messaging problem is bad enough to keep some people away.

I had a buddy try the boost unlimited plan because it's an incredible deal. He ended up ditching it because it was taking over five minutes to get text messages. I hope they get the problems resolved sooner than later.

[Shizam76]

A friend of the family has it...and some texts and pic messages are hours late. He asked me about one the other day, that arrived 2 days later.

[Mobile Mike]

This was the problem before with Nextel and now it's still a problem for Boost. I guess not much has changed with iDEN.

I wonder if this will backfire on Sprint?

[bobolito]

What affects Boost also affects Nextel. They are the same network.

[Mobile Mike]

Originally Posted by bobolito

What affects Boost also affects Nextel. They are the same network.

I wonder how much more Boost is cannibalizing Nextel now than before, and how it will affect Sprint as a whole.

[Yankees368]

Who did not see this coming. iDen sucks.

[larry]

Yeah the iDEN system has had text problems for years. The CDMA system has been flawless for me.

[Matt]

Originally Posted by larry

Yeah the iDEN system has had text problems for years. The CDMA system has been flawless for me.

and back then, before the merger, I would suppose the average Nextel user (business user) would have sent way fewer texts than the average customer. Now they are attracting customers who send hundreds if not thousands of texts, pictures, etc. each month.

[larry]

Yep text messaging among all users has greatly increased in popularity during the last 3 years.

[ComicalMoodyDan]

Originally Posted by Yankees368

Who did not see this coming. iDen sucks.

That pretty much sums up what I think of the Nextel system. I've tried iDen in the past, twice and I was unimpressed with it. Not only does Nextel have poor coverage in my area but the text messaging was so hit or miss. At times yes the texting was fine but quite often I'd get double or more texts and/or I'd get messages hours after they were sent to me.

What annoys me is Nextel/Boost's stance that this is only a recent problem, Nextel's text messaging has been awful for years now. It's not a problem that's related to customer adds although that may be making the delays worse than normal. The main problem though is the outdated internet protocol that Nextel/Boost uses to send and receive text messages.

[Matt]

Originally Posted by ComicalMoodyDan

What annoys me is Nextel/Boost's stance that this is only a recent problem,

Well, that's what they are saying publicly. It helps create an impression that the plan is popular with consumers that so many are signing up for it and causing these delays. You have to be careful though as that strategy can backfire if they don't get it fixed.

[Yankees368]

It has been floating around the news since yesterday that there is a fix in the works for SMS on boost for May 7th...whatever that may be

[SmArTeStChIlD421]

iDEN does support regular SMS. it's built into the phones but Nextel chose to use the full data service. for example when i first activate a Boost phone it wasn't completely active so my texts were coming through the standar routes. i was receiveing them insantaneously but i couldn't send any through these channels.

[71montecarloguy]

I have a problem with Boost Mobile texting. I have the $50/month unlimited deal, but I can't send or receive text messages more often than I can, and the same with the web capabilities. I'm thorougly disgusted with the service, and am VERY close to ditching. As a college student on a limited budget, whose parents don't use cell phones, I needed a cheap alternative to a contract service, and thought I had found it with Boost. However, the problems with the Boost Service(NEXTEL), have been more than irritating.

Customer support was no help..at all. If anyone has any ideas of how I could fix this problem(other than to ditch Boost ) please let me know!

[Simon5282]

Originally Posted by 71montecarloguy

Customer support was no help..at all. If anyone has any ideas of how I could fix this problem(other than to ditch Boost ) please let me know!

The same advice I gave to the other poster in the other thread. Switch to VM. Fifty bucks unlimited airtime and ten bucks for unlimited text. Sixty bucks total. I think that it is worth the extra ten bucks for reliable service.

Welcome to the forums. It is good to have you. I think it is funny how you get these old threads bumped when we get new guys in. I don't have a problem with it. I just think it is humorous. Anyways, a very warm welcome to the forums. Hope I could help.

[71montecarloguy]

Haha Thank you for the warm welcome AND the advice.