Dish bought Ting Mobile from Tucows in August, and this week Dish named Robert Currie to lead the brand.
Currie comes from Canada-based Telus Communications, where he led two of its mobile brands: Koodo Mobile and Public Mobile. Currie will serve as senior vice president of Ting Mobile where he will lead the Ting Mobile business, and he will also work on Dish’s overall MVNO platform strategy and operations.
Currie will report to John Swieringa, Dish COO and group president of retail wireless. Dish now has two mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs): Ting, which provides postpaid wireless; and Boost Mobile, a prepaid service.
Ting has brought about 271,000 new subscribers to Dish, and Boost Mobile has brought about 9 million subscribers. Both brands will ride on T-Mobile’s network as part of a seven-year MVNO agreement between T-Mobile and Dish, as the latter works to build out its own greenfield 5G wireless network to become a fourth nationwide facilities-based competitor.
When Dish purchased Ting, it indicated that it was especially interested in Ting’s back-office capabilities, including billing, activation, provisioning and marketing. Dish said it would use these same back-office capabilities for Boost.
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New pricing scheme at Ting
Dish also added announced new pricing tiers for Ting, offering unlimited talk and text, starting at $10 per month and unlimited talk, text and data starting at $45 per month.
Ting previously offered its services in a “pay-as-you-go” postpaid scheme. According to Best MVNO, Ting sold its service in the form of “usage buckets,” with the monthly cost depending on how many minutes, text messages, or MB of data a customer used during a billing cycle. “But with the plan updates announced today, Ting will operate in a way that is more in-line with traditional carriers,” said Best MVNO.
“Moving from pay-as-you-go rates to these plans represents a fresh new approach for Ting Mobile and allows customers to choose plans that meet their specific data needs,” said Dish’s Swieringa, in a statement.
Wave7 Research Principal Jeff Moore noted that Dish bought Ting mostly for its back-office software. “There has to be something about their back-office systems, certainly there’s nothing else about Ting. It doesn’t have tremendous advertising or subscribers that would make them super attractive for Dish.”
But Moore said it seems positive that Dish is marching ahead with its wireless ambitions, hiring an executive to lead Ting and to help with Dish’s overall MVNO strategy.
