Early this week, Dish Network surprised everyone with its announcement that it had acquired Tucows Inc.’s Ting Mobile brand. The company was able to acquire rights to use the brand along with its customers for a couple of years. The agreement states that the Ting Mobile business will continue to be operated by Tucows. This means that Dish will be taking over the 153,600 accounts and 271,700 subscribers that Ting Mobile has.
In addition to acquiring the brand, Dish will be gaining access to Tucows’ mobile software platform. This will give Dish access to services such as customer billing, funnel marketing, provisioning, and activation. With its recent Boost Mobile acquisition, Dish plans to transition its 9 million customers over to the platform by the second half of 2021.
Full details of the financial agreement was not disclosed. A Ting representative, however, shared that “there is no consideration at close. Instead, Tucows will receive a fair value earnout for the life of the Ting Mobile subscribers.”
With the acquisition, most Ting Mobile customers in the country will gain access to the new T-Mobile network. And while Ting has since been using T-Mobile as a network provider, it now has access to Sprint’s network to expand its reach. Still, some customers continue to have access to Verizon’s network, since it was added as a partner just a few months ago. But it’s possible that these customers will see changes take place real soon.
