Tap by MoviCell

Own work

Tap by MoviCell (formerly TAP Wireless) is an American-exclusive prepaid wireless service provider owned by MoviCell, Inc., a subsidiary Trujillo, Inc. Tap offers customers unlimited talk, text, data, and hotspot, on sister company MoviCell's 4G LTE and 5G Networks at a lower price. Founded in 2012 by Telestrella North America, it supports both Android and Apple phones. Tap by MoviCell is headquartered in Houston, Texas, United States.

TAP Wireless
Tap was founded on March 16, 2012, by San Francisco-based Telestrella North America, a subsidiary of Spanish telecommunications company Telestrella. Originally known as TAP Wireless (TAP being an acronym for Totally Affordable Plans), the network exclusively launched in California in its first month and was aimed to younger users who couldn't afford phone plans from larger wireless carriers. Following a massive subscriber growth in the next six months, TAP expanded across the western United States. By the end of 2014, the network had expanded all over United States and reached to the large cities of Canada as TAP Canada.

On February 10, 2016, Telestrella announced it would shut down its North American operations and placed TAP Wireless up for auction. Trujillo, Inc., an American multinational conglomerate, won the auction for $1.4 billion and the transaction was approved on October 23, 2016. TAP Wireless became the sister provider of MoviCell, one of the country's largest providers of mobile telephone services. In January 2017, TAP moved all of its users to MoviCell's GSM network while shutting down its CDMA network. All users/subscribers (including those with legacy handsets) were required to buy new devices in order to be able to maintain connectivity to the new TAP network. The CDMA-GSM switchover was completed in August 2017 and the 2G networks from both providers were shut down on December 31st of that year.

In 2018, TAP introduced new unlimited plans bundled with features such as Netflix and Spotify subscriptions and MoviCloud storage. These plans helped the company decrease the negative reputation it received during its Telestrella ownership. The subscriber count increased from 13.2 to 19.4 million by the end of the year. In 2019, the company launched a promotion where new customers get a free phone when switching to TAP. This promotion later upgraded to free tablets and wearable devices. As of 2023, the promotion is still ongoing and new and existing customers can upgrade to a free 5G phone.

TAP and MoviCell launched their 5G network nationwide on August 1, 2020, all while shutting down their 3G network, which was finalized on September 18, 2021.

In May 2021, TAP announced it would shut down it's Canadian networks by the end off 2022 and encourage users to switch over to Nova Wireless.

Tap by MoviCell
In response to the upcoming shutdown of its Canadian networks, the company renamed as Tap by MoviCell on November 24, 2022, as the network will exclusively serve the United States. Tap ceased the Canadian networks on December 31st.