Twenty-one US wireless brands we track have shut down for good. Most died for one of three reasons: the Sprint network shutdown in 2022, an acquisition that retired the brand, or the business simply failing. If you still hold a number from one of them, the number is usually recoverable, but porting it is harder than porting a live line.

Every confirmed shutdown

Each row is confirmed by a first-party statement on that carrier’s own page. Brands we could not confirm are not on this list. Where a carrier never published a shutdown date, the cell says so rather than guessing.

Brand	When	What happened	Where customers went
Alltel	Early 2016	Split between Verizon and AT&T, then dissolved by AT&T	Verizon and AT&T
AT&T GoPhone	July 2017	AT&T retired the GoPhone brand	AT&T Prepaid
Best Cellular	Date not published	Stopped operating as a wireless carrier	Lines closed, numbers released
Charge	June 30, 2017	Sprint MVNO, ended operations	Not published
DTC Wireless	Date not published	No longer offers wireless service	Not published
enVie Mobile	Date not published	Out of business; H2O Wireless discontinued the brand	H2O Wireless
Español Mobile	Date not published	Out of business	Not published
NTT DoCoMo USA	2016	Discontinued its US wireless service	Not published
PlatinumTel Mobile	Date not published	Went out of business	Numbers ported out or deactivated
PrepaYd Wireless	Date not published	Went out of business	Numbers ported out or deactivated
Q Link Wireless	Date not published	Shut down and debarred	Lifeline customers reassigned
ROK Mobile	Date not published	Shut down Verizon service, then the Sprint side	Not published
Spot Mobile	Date not published	Went out of business	Numbers ported out or deactivated
Sprint Postpaid	Brand retired Aug 2020, network off 2022	T-Mobile merger closed April 1, 2020	T-Mobile
Sprint Prepaid	2020	Transferred to DISH Network	Boost Mobile (DISH)
SRT Communications	Date not published	Discontinued its wireless business	Recommends another carrier
Total Call Mobile	December 25, 2016	Went out of business	enTouch Wireless
Touch Mobile	Date not published	No longer offering service	Not published
Univision Mobile	July 11, 2017	Out of business	Ultra Mobile
Voyager Mobile	2015	Went out of business	Not published
WUE	Date not published	Discontinued offering cellular service	Not published

The Sprint shutdown killed more brands than any acquisition

T-Mobile closed its merger with Sprint on April 1, 2020, retired the Sprint brand in August 2020, and shut the Sprint network down in 2022. Every MVNO that depended on Sprint towers lost its network in one step. That is not a list of unrelated failures. It is one event with many names attached to it.

Carriers often blamed for shutting down that did not: Choice Wireless, Claro, United Wireless and Chit Chat Mobile all lost Sprint roaming or CDMA service, not their own business. FreedomPop ended its free plan in February 2026 but the brand still operates under Red Pocket Mobile. Project Fi was renamed Google Fi in 2018, not discontinued.

You have a number from a dead carrier. Now what?

A dead carrier is the hardest port there is. There is no customer service line to call for an account number, and no transfer PIN to generate. What usually still works: the number stays assigned to the underlying network for a period after the brand closes, and the carrier that absorbed the customer base can often release it.

Look up transfer PIN and account number instructions for 228 US carriers — free, no signup.

How this list was built

We track 228 US carriers. Every candidate was tested against one question: is the carrier itself the subject of the shutdown, or is the page describing something that happened to a network it used? That single test removed seven brands that are still operating. Three more were dropped because the only available wording was speculative rather than factual.