Texting Delays Mar Popularity Of $50 Boost Plan

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.