Mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) set out to offer something different to established mobile network carriers.

These MVNOs don’t own and operate their own mobile infrastructure, but instead piggyback off of existing telecom providers.

While legacy telecom carriers already have an established reputation with the public, MVNOs attempt to crack the market and drive their own propositions to customers, often tailored for a particular segment.

One such MVNO is MobileX, founded by Peter Adderton in 2019. Adderton also cofounded Boost Mobile back in 2001, later sold to Dish.

Adderton is a marketing man by background, and his motivation to get into telecoms wasn’t a love for the industry, as much as a frustration about how existing carriers brand their networks.

“I’ll never understand why carriers don’t understand the power of a brand,” he says. “There's no truly global brand when it comes to carriers. They are basically disliked by probably every one of their customers [but] their customers are too lazy to leave, and they rely on that inertia to maintain the status quo.”

He continues: “They’ll brand their network to say they're the best or the cheapest. But no one wants to wear Verizon or wants to have AT&T on there. But you look at other industries, look at Monster Energy and Pepsi and some of these other brands, such as Coca Cola, people want to wear these.”

Adderton explains that MobileX has sought to reach younger audiences, striking partnerships centered on sports, lifestyle, and culture.

“MobileX has focused on building a lifestyle-driven brand and challenging traditional carrier expectations in an industry that has historically lacked cultural relevance. The strategy centers on high-impact partnerships and cultural integrations that position the brand beyond standard telecom marketing,” he says.

An example is bringing in BMX icon Ryan Williams as a global ambassador, plus some sports sponsorships with NASCAR and the X Games.

Boost beginnings

Adderton established Boost Mobile in his native Australia and neighboring New Zealand in 2001, initially targeting prepaid customers, who he felt had been neglected by the country’s main telcos.

“When I started Boost, I thought, ‘imagine if we created a brand that actually didn't make a prepaid customer feel like they were the poor customer’,” he says. “Everybody wanted the postpaid customer, the higher-value customer.

“I thought that wasn’t right, and it’s what led me to launch the Boost brand. I wanted a cool youth brand, something that made people feel good about themselves, even though it was for younger people who often didn't have credit.”

A year later, Adderton, along with his fellow co-founders Craig Cooper and Kirt McMaster, expanded the MVNO into the US as part of a joint venture with Nextel Communications, before Nextel acquired the JV in 2003.

Adderton retained control of Boost Mobile Australia until he sold to Telstra for AU$145 million (US$102m) in 2024.

This was to “focus all my energy and effort on MobileX,” he says. “As any entrepreneur will tell you, you've got to be all in. You can't have one foot in one camp and one in the other, so now I'm all in on MobileX,” he adds.

His latest MVNO, MobileX, was set up in 2019, and offers 5G mobile plans via Verizon’s network. It sells plans through 2,500 wireless dealers across the US, plus 3,000 Walmart stores.

Though Adderton declined to put a figure on how many customers have monthly plans through MobileX, he stated in an interview last year that the number was in the “tens of thousands.”

The company’s proposition reflects what Adderton believes is a changing consumer mindset around connectivity. “I can now market MobileX for $80 a month, unlimited WiFi anywhere in the world,” he says. “Verizon and AT&T won't do that because they only care about their shores. The telcos are living in a world with borders, but the world has become borderless as far as consumers are concerned.

“When you land in any country, Instagram, Facebook, and emails all work immediately. What doesn't work immediately is your connectivity. It's a completely horrible experience.”

MobileX can position itself as the network “that can provide global connectivity, as that super app competitor that I don't think anyone else is building today,” Adderton argues.

He explains that most carriers have built their web interface into a legacy system, while MobileX has built its around an “app-native infrastructure that transforms the traditional mobile experience into an intelligent, cost-optimized connectivity platform.”

“We centralize the entire user journey - from AI-driven plan management and Xtra Options service add-ons to international calling and our recently launched SIM swap - directly within the app,” he says.

“By housing every critical function in one place, we’ve created a 'Super App' that puts the customer in total control of their global connectivity.”

AI-enabled plans

Adderton says MobileX uses AI to determine exactly what each client requires.

The MVNO is able to do this through a proprietary AI-driven platform which leverages AI to provide customers with a personalized service. Adderton explains that MobileX is able to use an AI forecaster to analyze their individual data usage and suggest a customized plan.

“This ensures the customer only pays for the data they need and nothing more,” he says. “Customers don’t know how much they need, or how much talktime and texts they require.”

Adderton adds that AI continues to monitor usage in the background and provide insight for customers, recommending changes. He says MobileX has been doing this since 2019, before AI became the buzzword that it is today.

The market that MobileX is playing in is a competitive one, which Adderton says is close to the saturation point. An estimated 300 MVNOs currently operate across the US alone.

“When I started Boost, 51 percent of Americans didn't have a cellphone,” he says. “It was the same in Australia. The opportunity to grow that business expanded really quickly because half of the country didn't have any phones.”

The world is very different now, and Adderton says that the future of the market could be dependent on how aggressively the Big Three carriers - AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon - attack the sector, as telcos increasingly look to introduce their own sub-brand MVNOs.

“I think you're going to see a massive car wreck of MVNOs in the next five years, because the Big Three carriers are looking to grow in the space, whereas before they let us grab the coins out of the couch,” he says.

Another competitor is, ironically, Boost Mobile, the company that Adderton co-founded and that is now owned by EchoStar and operated via Dish Wireless.

Alongside Dish, Boost had ambitions to become the fourth carrier in the US, but is now effectively an MVNO after parent company EchoStar’s high-profile spectrum sales to AT&T and SpaceX. EchoStar’s CEO, Charlie Ergen, has claimed the company was effectively forced to sell the spectrum under pressure from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). It leaves the company without the spectrum required to build a full MNO, meaning Dish and Boost remain in MVNO territory.

Adderton believes Dish was effectively set up to fail, and enable the merger of two other companies, T-Mobile and Sprint, because the FCC wanted the US market to retain a fourth network operator. Sprint Communications agreed to divest its prepaid wireless businesses to EchoStar to get the T-Mobile deal approved.

Adderton doesn’t expect the saga to end anytime soon, but thinks the chances of a new major carrier being set up imminently are remote. This is despite a legal “consent decree” - also known as a dissent decree - having been imposed on T-Mobile and Sprint by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) when the merger was approved, requiring the creation of a fourth network.

“It’s still going to be interesting to see what the DoJ does, because there's still the dissent decree with massive penalties if they don't build out that fourth network, which they haven't opined on yet, and they haven't given anybody any indication what they're going to do,” he says.

Just connect us

Adderton expects big changes for the mobile landscape in the next decade.

He notes that the industry is already seeing this through the satellite sector, as more operators make more waves in this space, in particular, Elon Musk’s SpaceX via its Starlink constellation.

Though Adderton is skeptical that satellites are for the mass market, he says that ultimately consumers won’t care how they are kept online as long as the data keeps flowing.

“In the next five to ten years, people will be buying their connectivity off a super app, one that takes all the complexity of connecting a network and puts that in the back end and makes it really simple for the consumer on the front end,” he argues. “For this generation, it's all about connectivity. They care little about where they get the connectivity from, as long as they remain online.”

Whether that connectivity is WiFi, 4G, 5G, or even satellite, MobileX wants to shake up the traditional mobile carrier status quo.