Wireless

MobileX CEO reflects on new CONX ownership, old critics and what’s next

By Monica Alleven Aug 26, 2026 10:56am

EchoStar MobileX Charlie Ergen Boost Mobile

Charlie Ergen’s CONX is taking a controlling stake in Peter Adderton’s MobileX, giving the AI-powered MVNO fresh capital to scale its brand
Adderton says the exact investment amount matters less than what it enables: a bigger marketing push to explain MobileX’s consumer pitch
The deal puts Adderton and Ergen in business together despite Adderton’s long-running criticism of Boost Mobile, the brand he founded decades ago

In some ways, the deal between Charlie Ergen’s special purpose acquisition company CONX and Peter Adderton’s MobileX may seem like it’s coming out of left field.

After all, Adderton has been a harsh critic of Ergen’s Boost Mobile, the original business of which Adderton founded decades ago – before it was acquired by Nextel Communications in 2003 and far before it ever landed under the ownership of Ergen in 2020.

But MobileX announced this week that CONX is getting a 60% controlling interest in MobileX and injecting an undisclosed amount into the MVNO. Citing people familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal said the deal values MobileX at about $200 million.

CONX and MobileX did not confirm or deny that dollar amount.

According to Adderton, the exact monetary figure doesn’t matter – so long as he’s getting enough cash to move the marketing machine into high gear for MobileX, which has sunk a lot of money into developing its AI technology but not nearly enough in getting the word out on why it’s so good for consumers.

The investment amount is “irrelevant because when you look at what we're doing and what we're building, we're going to need substantial investment in being able to grow the brand,” he told Fierce. Therefore, focusing on the exact investment amount “is kind of pointless to me.”

Adderton freely admits that he’s been a harsh critic of Ergen’s current iteration of Boost Mobile, but he’s been talking to Ergen “for years” – including before Fierce reported a potential tie-up more than a year ago.

They’ve developed a mutual respect for one another, according to Adderton. (Fierce reached out to Ergen’s Dish/EchoStar for comment and didn’t immediately hear back.)

“We're both aligned in what we want to do and I think that's the key,” he said.

In other words, they’re willing to acknowledge when they’re right and when they’re wrong.

“That, to me, builds a very strong foundation, a very strong partnership in the fact that we both acknowledge what we're good at and we both acknowledge what we what we're not good at… You know, I would hire my biggest critic tomorrow, right, if it was valid” criticism, Adderton said.

CONX’s takeover of MobileX

Adderton initially controlled about 61% of the equity and voting interests in Mobile X, but his stake has declined incrementally and would be reduced to about 19% as a result of the CONX transaction. Mobile X has about 107,000 paid customers, according to an FCC filing seeking approval of the transaction.

Verizon, which supplies Mobile X’s network connectivity as part of an MVNO agreement, will receive 12.5% of the equity in Mobile X at the conclusion of their current MVNO agreement, which is expected to end within nine months.

Adderton declined to comment his deal with Verizon, other than to say it’s been “a great partner.”

Immediately after the closing of the deal, Adderton will hold 19.42% of the equity and voting interests, with the remaining 19.65% of equity and voting interests held by other shareholders, with no other shareholder holding 10% or more of outstanding interests.

Who’s the boss? Ergen or Adderton?

Given Ergen’s majority stake, “that’s pretty easy to work out who the boss is,” Adderton said.

However, Adderton will run MobileX on a day-to-day basis. “It’s an independent company. It's not part of Boost. It's not part of EchoStar. It's part of CONX, and we're running it as an independent business,” he said.

As for any designs that Adderton might swoop in and make Boost Mobile whole again – it’s been losing customers since Ergen acquired it as part of the T-Mobile/Sprint merger – well, that’s not in the cards.

“This is the irony: The same owner who's got a large stake in us has a large stake in EchoStar. But I’ve got nothing to do with EchoStar. I know people put Boost and Mobile X together … but I’ve got zero to do with Boost. Zero,” Adderton said.

Adderton was part of the team that first launched Boost Mobile in Australia before bringing it to the U.S., where he eventually drafted hip hop artists and other celebrities to serve as brand ambassadors – after Nextel threatened to shut it down and he threatened to sue over it.

His theme at the original Boost was sporty and edgy all at once – things that look a lot like his current business at Mobile X, which sponsors race car drivers and leans heavy into extreme sports and racing themes.

What happened to Amp’d Mobile?

What a lot of people forget, or aren’t aware of, is after separating from Boost Mobile, Adderton led Amp’d Mobile from around 2004-2008. It was an MVNO that went bankrupt under his leadership.

One of the big issues for Amp’d was it hired wireless industry veteran Sue Swenson – a big catch for Amp’d as she was also the former COO at T-Mobile. But T-Mobile filed suit over a non-compete dispute, blocking her from joining Amp’d for 12 months.

That led to troubles for Amp’d, and its private equity investors grew impatient.

Still, Adderton said the ultimate demise of Amp’d was more about the global financial crisis at the time rather than his leadership style or any other single event. In fact, the business he’s most proud of creating is “the one that went bankrupt,” he said.

Why? For one, it was the first to launch with Facebook Mobile. For another, it led the way into live video streaming – years before watching YouTube on smartphones was a thing.

Back in those days, Amp’d was using Qualcomm’s BREW technology; Qualcomm was an investor in Amp’d.

“All of the things that you see today, we were doing in 2003, back when there was 1X EV-DO and there was no iOS, there was no Android. It was Java or it was BREW … We were livestreaming.”

Long story short, “it was more of a financial corporate structure that failed than the actual company itself, and I take responsibility for that. But anyone who worked at Amp’d – what we were doing and what we were building – is really what you see today. It's entertainment on the device, right? It's video streaming and people forget that.”

Another fun fact: Amp’d was the first to create an original mobile series. It was called “Lil’ Bush” – an animated series about former President George Bush and former VP Dick Cheney – and it ultimately got picked up by MTV and went on to become a Comedy Central show.

Adderton’s big plans for MobileX

Back to Mobile X’s plans. While the Big 3 carriers are spending billions on their own brands and their sub-brands like Verizon’s Visible, Metro by T-Mobile and AT&T’s Cricket, “the thing that MobileX needs to do is it needs to get in front of Americans and let them know why we're different and why we're disruptive,” Adderton said.

MobileX’s secret sauce uses AI to calculate how much data a customer needs so they’re paying for the amount of data they actually use rather than shelling out a set fee every month for an “unlimited” amount of data, most of which goes unused for a lot of people.

“We've been putting so much money and investment into the platform, into the technology, that we haven't had the money to market the [Mobile X] service,” Adderton said.

Will Mobile X have a relationship with SpaceX?

How exactly Mobile X evolves a relationship with SpaceX, of which EchoStar is part owner via its spectrum sale to the Elon Musk company, and its direct-to-device (D2D) services remain unknown. But Adderton is clearly a big fan of Musk and the satellite empire he’s created.

“Whether we did this transaction or not, I've been a big fan of multiple networks, including satellite, and obviously, I've got an X in my brand,” he said.

EchoStar’s “got a very strong relationship with SpaceX, and I want to have the ability to be able to have” D2D services. “We're not announcing anything, but you can pretty much realize that that's a focus of ours,” he said, emphasizing that he doesn’t sell a single “network” but focuses on connectivity.

“I want the ability for customers to be able to go from Wi-Fi to go to Starlink to go to any space-based satellite service. We want to make sure that we're not focused on a specific network … But I would say watch this space. More to come on that over the next few months.”