the plan drops to

Why Boost Mobile doesn't want the iPhone

This is despite the Apple iPhone becoming available on Sprint under a two year contract last October and the company's other no contract brand, Virgin Mobile, adding the handset in June.

In other words Sprint is purposely choosing not to deploy some of the most popular phones in the world to a group of its customers. Why?

"OK, we've got the iPhone. Clearly we could load it on both (Boost and Virgin) and it would drive just as much, probably more volume than loading it on one," said Smith. "At least initially we wanted to zero in on leveraging it as a tool in the Virgin lineup almost to cement, if you will, what we are trying to do with that brand in the no contract space and distinguish it from what we are trying to do with Boost."

So it's as simple as that: branding. Smith said they may change their minds about the iPhone though.

For now, Boost is being set up as a low cost Android carrier for "hard workin' folks who are really watching their dollars" while Virgin is a youth oriented lifestyle brand. In terms of pricing, Boost is being set up as bargain basement, Virgin costs a bit more, while Sprint and its two year contracts remain the most expensive.

More specifically the iPhone 4S on Virgin Mobile is $650 and the iPhone 4 is $550. In comparison, Samsung's popular Galaxy S II Android phone was added to Boost's lineup last month to become its most expensive device at $370.

"To me that's pushing the limit. My own perspective would be to stay under $300. But the Galaxy SII is a beautiful device," said Smith. "We actually are probably doing our customers a bit of a disservice quite frankly if we try to steer them toward a $500 or $600 device."

Sprint's careful brand positioning comes as it tries to catch up to Verizon and AT The two carriers beat Sprint to carry the iPhone and are beating the company to the rollout of super high speed 4G LTE service. Sprint originally embraced a different flavor of 4G technology called Wimax that never got a complete rollout. It goes only as far south as Irvine.

Sprint eventually did get the iPhone and embraced the same 4G LTE technology as Verizon and AT That, in turn, means Boost now technically gets to say it offers "4G" but it's the half completed Wimax service. The flagship Galaxy SII on Boost can access this network. Meanwhile, Sprint is selling 4G LTE devices under a two year contract before most of the country is covered by the new kind of high speed service.

Last year Boost began offering a $50 per month unlimited everything plan with a twist. After six months of on time payments (they don't need to be consecutive) the plan drops to $45. Six more and it goes to $40. Repeat once again and it bottoms out at $35.

Combined with phones loaded with relatively recent versions of Android and you had an inexpensive alternative to the iPhone. And it came with an unlimited data plan on Sprint's nationwide network, something becoming increasingly rare for AT and Verizon as they push users toward unlimited minutes and messages but severely limited data plans with overages.

In September Boost tacked $5 onto its shrinking plans for Android phones to account for the higher data usage on the phones. The plans could still shrink to $40 after 18 months.

"We wanted to maintain the shrinking payment, because we believe that is a very important driver of loyalty within our customer base, while at the same time have the price plan reflect the economics of smartphones," said Smith.