Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Boost looks East to boost market share

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 07 May 2004 05:26:52 -0400

Boost looks east to boost market share 
Irvine wireless company  now offering 
products in D.C., N.Y., and will start
advertising nationally.

4/1/2004

JIM FINKLE 
The Orange County Register 

Irvine's Boost Mobile is sending its troops jetting across the 
United States as it strives to catch up with rival Virgin Mobile, 
the biggest company hawking wireless phones and services especially 
to teenagers and twenty-somethings. 

Boost, which has more than 400,000 customers, said Monday that it's 
started offering its products in New York, Chicago, Washington, 
D.C., and four other markets. Virgin has more than 1.75 million 
customers. 

The company and owner Nextel Communications have spent the past 18 
months test-marketing the brand in California and Nevada. They've 
persuaded huge retailers such as Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Target and 7- 
Eleven to carry Boost products. And they replaced some key managers, 
including founder Peter Adderton. 

Boost's expansion will give it the ability to market to 186 million 
people, more than five times its potential customer base to date. 
That could help Boost narrow the gap with Virgin Mobile, which 
already is available pretty much everywhere in the United States. On 
March 15, Virgin said it signed up 750,000 subscribers in just four 
months. 

"In terms of geographic reach and retail channel, the strategy says 
to me that Boost can more or less be on par with Virgin," said 
Charles Golvin, a principal analyst with Forrester Research. "But 
the brand is something that Boost will need to spend more to 
establish, because Virgin was already a recognizable brand (before 
they went into wireless) that they were able to leverage." 

Both Boost and Virgin require their customers to pay for their 
service in advance. 

On April 26, Boost will start its first national advertising 
campaign on national cable channels including MTV and the Comedy 
Channel. 

The company's unconventional ads, which have already aired in 
Southern California, feature rappers and older people chatting like 
urban youth on Boost's walkie-talkies. 

Boost declined to say how much it's investing in the expansion. But 
it's clear that it's spending heavily to prepare for the growth: 

It's more than tripled its staff over the past year to 173, and it's 
still hiring. 

It's narrowing down choices for a new headquarters in Irvine that 
will be three times the size of its 9,000-square- foot offices on 
Discovery. 

It's contracted customer telephone support out to three call 
centers, which have about 500 employees. It's getting ready to add a 
fourth. 

Boost doesn't appear to compete on pricing. It raised the price of 
its walkie-talkie service, which works only with phones on the Boost 
and Nextel networks, from $1 a day to $1.50 on March 1. 

Boost charges 25 cents per minute for all voice calls. Virgin 
charges 25 cents a minute for the first 10 minutes each day, then 10 
cents a minute. Virgin doesn't have a walkie-talkie service. 

(714) 796-6927 or [email-masked] 

Caption: Battle: Boost competes with Virgin. New ad: A Boost ad 
featuring older people is one of the company's unconventional TV 
commercials. Next month, the firm will start advertising on MTV and 
the Comedy Channel.

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