UPDATE 12/1/2025: Since this story first appeared, Fierce talked with outgoing Mobi CEO Justen Burdette, who disputed the allegations, including perhaps the most salacious – that he fled to Brazil.
Turns out, the narrative would have been closer to the truth if it had said he fled to Canada, where he previously lived, but that might not be as dramatic as Brazil, he told Fierce. At any rate, he said he’s at his home base in Honolulu, tying up loose ends and helping Mobi’s remaining customers port their phone numbers to other carriers.
It sounds like the trouble started late last year and cascaded from there, but it wasn’t anything nefarious about the network, according to Burdette. In short, it revolves around a dispute over control of the company and came to a turning point with the departure of two unnamed executives in early October of this year.
“It is very sad and heartbreaking what so many folks worked so many years at Mobi to build,” he said. “We got very close to being able to prove that all out … If I knew what to have done and could go back in time, I would certainly do whatever I could to try to change that.”
Earlier story follows: Talk about terrible timing. The Hawaiian mobile service provider Mobi, which seemed to have a lot going for itself just a few short years ago, appears to have gone belly up, with allegations that the CEO fled to Brazil.
It’s not clear what happened. Mobi, established in 2005, most recently operated as an MVNO, which is always a tough business. It had signed a multi-year relationship with T-Mobile in 2023 and was working on establishing a cloud-native mobile core, supported by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It sounded like the company was headed in the right direction. At last check, it had about 55,000 subscribers.
All of that seems to have gone by the wayside. In recent days and weeks, customers reported that their service was intermittent or shut off. No one answered their texts or calls to customer service.
But it gets worse. A lawsuit filed November 24 alleges that CEO Justen Burdette fled to Brazil, locking employees out of company systems and neglecting to fulfill a multimillion dollar purchase agreement. According to the complaint, he failed to pay $1 million in wages and terminated key executives without authorization.
The suit was filed by Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in Delaware Court of Chancery on behalf of shareholders JB Mobile Holding and Pierre-Emmanuel Durand. The Mobile Report previously reported on the lawsuit.
Mobi customers left in the lurch
With no warning, customers understandably were ticked off. Many of them took to Reddit to complain and seek advice on how to port their phone numbers.
For some, it appeared to be too little, too late. One person who identified as a Mobi customer contacted Fierce over the weekend via email to say that she and her husband needed to get new phones and new numbers because they couldn’t access the information to transfer their contacts to a new phone.
“He’s wiped out every single system to contact the company,” the email stated. “What a horrible thing to do! Especially around the holidays when money is already tight.”
Fierce tried to contact Mobi and Burdette but received no reply. Email to help@mobi.com was undeliverable and calls and texts to customer service either didn’t go through or went unanswered.
T-Mobile declined to comment. Fierce reached out to other sources as well and will update this story if we hear back. We also reached out to the FCC to see if it’s advising customers and/or considering some type of enforcement action.
Analyst: Future looked promising until recently
Up until now, Roy Chua, principal of AvidThink, was a beta user of the Mobi service that tapped into T-Mobile’s network.
“I would have to say the experience was positive on both iOS and Android devices that I tried it out on. It had worked well since the fall of 2024 until recently,” he told Fierce. “I had previously tested the service in different cities around the U.S. during my travels to conferences and client visits, and it worked robustly.”
But today, the phone isn’t attaching to the network and his eSIM won't register. “As an analyst covering the mobile space, I had been excited by Mobi's bold moves in 2024 to bet on Working Group Two's (WG2) cloud-native mobile core, written from the ground up and running on AWS,” Chua said. “WG2 had taken a different approach to the mobile core, eschewing 3GPP internal interfaces and replacing those with cloud-native messaging techniques.”
The rumors about the CEO fleeing to Brazil came as a surprise. For this author and other editors at Fierce, Burdette came across as authentic and well-versed in telecom industry dynamics.
“In all my interactions with him, he was a friendly and jovial entrepreneur with an ambition to upend the rules of the telecom game. It's unfortunate, and I hope the employees and investors at Mobi are made whole somehow,” Chua concluded.