And this is why competition and effective government regulation[1] are fantastic things. If T-Mobile wasn't in a distant fourth place in the US market, or if they'd been acquired by AT&T we wouldn't be seeing this, nor would we see Verizon and AT&T introduce their own versions of T-Mobile's JUMP program.
>If T-Mobile wasn't in a distant fourth place in the US market, or if they'd been acquired by AT&T we wouldn't be seeing this, nor would we see Verizon and AT&T introduce their own versions of T-Mobile's JUMP program.
I'm not an economist, and I haven't looked into the details of the cell phone market in depth, but here's a possible alternative opinion. I'm not asserting that this is the case; just wondering if it might be.
Would T-Mobile be able to treat customers as well if they were more popular, or are they only in this position because their ratio of customers to cell towers, spectrum, and other capital is lower? And if the latter is true, isn't that an inefficient use of resources, which market forces (i.e. the merger) would have corrected if not for government intervention?
This is not really a prime example of good competition. The only reason T-Mobile can do this is because they are basically getting a massive subsidization from the German mother company, the German Telecom, who is behaving in its German home market just like AT&T behaves in the USA. As soon as T-Mobile gains any significant market share it will be just like the others.
If the gov't didn't have its hand in this space for so long, there would be no massive AT&T and there would be way more innovation. You're cheering someone for applying a cast when they also broke the leg.
Would kind of like to see Softbank merge up Sprint and T-Mobile US (if it could be purchased), to give them even greater scale to put serious competitive pressure on AT&T / VZ. Softbank is good at attacking entrenched markets, the more market leverage they have the better.
T-Mobile's policies over the past couple of years have really made me want to become a customer. Plans that are actually reasonably priced, explicitly calling out handset subsidies and making them optional, and now this. I just wish their network was a little better!
I just switched in April after hating life with AT&T and deciding to put my money where my mouth was.
In cities - their coverage is VERY good. Countryside & cross country road trips are where they fall off the map, but I've been very happy paying $80 for unlimited call/text/data + No B.S.
T-Mobile is way behind in terms of users & they know it - which means they're making strong plays against the competition. Makes me want to bet on them for no other reason than to force the other carriers to step up their game.
As much as I love T Mobile's policies, I hate their coverage. I get 0 bars inside non-wood buildings, but when I step outside, I get a few bars. I live in a somewhat hilly area, so I get spotty reception in certain parts of town. I really wish they would spend more money trying to improve their coverage instead of telling everyone how they are so different. Because even if they are different, if they have poor coverage, they won't get a lot of customers.
T-Mobile sounds great on paper but it's like selling sports cars for 1000$ and you don't know you just bought a Lada until you take it for a spin.
I drove from the Canadian east coast to California with a T-Mobile unlimited plan. For 90% of the trip, I was actually roaming on other carriers' networks. I derived zero value from my payment to T-Mobile since I can't actually use my phone except for 911. Now I'm in San Francisco for half a year and speed is around 0.05Mbps in about 30% of the city. And they're not uninhabited spots of town either.
I rarely leave the city, so the lack of coverage in rural areas doesn't bother me. In NYC I have to say I've noticed a small improvement in reception over AT&T - buildings where I've been dead in the water before now have some connectivity.
So far so good, this new announcement is just icing on the cake, especially as a Canadian expat. It used to be that when visiting home I'd inevitably wind up with one helluva phone bill, and that's just with extremely minimal texting and calling just to herd cats.
I've used T-Mobile for about 10 years total. I've also used Sprint for two years. I live in the city so my reception is pretty much identical to every other mobile service as long as I'm in the city. When I leave the city, T-Mobile is not as good as my friends who have Verizon, but then again they are frequently paying close to twice what I pay. I figure that if I can get good service 99% of the time while living in a city and deal with lesser service that 1% of the time I'm not in the city, that is a compromise that I'm glad to pay much less for.
Plans that are actually reasonably priced, explicitly calling out handset subsidies and making them optional
This has actually been the norm in UK for quite some years. Look on t-mobile.co.uk for example, they have a SIM Only plans. As an example:
> The Full Monty (SIM Only), £26/month on 12 month contract = unlimited talk, text + data
> iPhone 5c 16GB, £42/month on 24 month contract = unlimited talk, text + data, £30 for phone
So the same plan, the iPhone effectively costs you £414. That't not actually a bad price, esp if you consider it as finance. But not everyone wants a new phone, e.g. maybe your iPhone 5 is still "good" and you want to wait for the iPhone 6 to come out in a year...
I was a T-Mobile customer for years, and liked my experience very much. The only reason I am not a customer right now is because I had been traveling to China quite a bit and needed a provider that I could access over there.
As soon as this contract is over or work is no longer paying, I am switching back.
I left T-Mobile when at&t was offering better plan. The only thing I wish all carriers will do is eliminate minute deduction for calling your friend who isn't in your network.
Do they already have that for daytime? I think for most carriers out there, if not, all, night time is minute free.
I switched a few months ago and it's been great. I was afraid I was going to have to switch away, since we're going to be out of the country a lot next year. I'm super happy to be able to stick with them now.
> While the data is free, it won't be particularly fast. Customers can expect network speeds at around the same level that they get in the US after they are throttled. Chief Marketing Officer Mike Sievert said the average speed customers would get would be around 128 kilobits a second.
Think of it more of an extension of the Kindle 3G business model rather than anything else. The maximum one could theoretically suck through that straw, at 24/7, is 40 GB a month.
That still sounds pretty reasonable, considering that at normal roaming-data prices, that 40 GB would cost you about $10,000. Between a speed cap and insane prices, I'll take the speed cap!
For me, that's not the painful part. The painful part is the six week limit.
When I was in Taiwan, I was handed a prepaid dumbphone and a 4G wireless hotspot with iffy battery life and some indoor coverage issues.
Being able to send/receive SMSs and brief phone calls with my smartphone's home number, and keep up on email and light browsing on my own phone without being at the mercy of the hotspot, would have been very nice, but I was there for ~9 months split into two trips during the course of a year.
I would gladly pay an extra $10-20/month (with $0.20/minute voice) for such capability over an extended period, but that wasn't, and apparently still is not, an option.
I would be willing to pay for this service here in the US for a reasonable price. There are plenty of things I would love a low-end data plan for, but can't justify the cost of $45/mo for prepaid data at 1.5GB/mo like Net10 offers. Think of electronics projects that could benefit from an anywhere, always on connection even if it's super slow. But is that project worth $45/mo, and is it worth it if you run out of data before the end of the month?
T-Mobile has realized exactly what a carrier is supposed to be and ironically named it "Uncarrier". No more subsidizing phones, no more contracts, just a pipe. We will move data between your phone and the world for a flat fee and that is the end of the story. I switched to T-Mobile about a month ago because I agree with their business practices and want to support their growth.
Good to hear. US carriers do a terrible job of dealing with anything international. It's as though they're honestly surprised that anybody would ever want to leave the USA or make a phone call to anybody in another country.
An example: I flew to the 'states this weekend. Once on the ground, I topped up my American (T-Mobile) sim with a month's worth of credit. (There was no way to do this from abroad since their sims don't work there at all, and their website has a ridiculous country redirect even from your account page).
At the airport, on the way home, I sent a text to my wife letting her know I was on the way. It failed.
I tried again to various permutations of the French number, with absolutely no success. Googling around, it seems that you can't do that with t-mobile. You can't even get them to turn it on, since their "international" packages only work with their contract services. Not just roaming, but even placing a phone call to another country is impossible with pre-paid t-mobile. Sure enough, landing in Paris, the phone was dead dead dead. No "welcome to France" message. No extortionate international roaming charges. Just no ability to make calls at all.
I had to pop my UK sim back in just to be able to use the phone again.
I'm looking forward to the first company (in any country) that truly gets all this. They'll get my business, as well as pretty much all the business from anybody who travels at all.
This is great. I had an incident in Belize this year where I turned off airplane mode to connect to wifi on the boat I was on and my cellular radio auto-connected to Belize's local mobile carrier without me realizing (I had international roaming enabled on my account). My phone started syncing and updating apps in the background and within 2 minutes of passive usage I had amassed $270 in data charges. Only. 2. Minutes.
I plead my case when I got back to the states and they removed the charges without a thought (although I had to send in a written appeal). International data rates are ridiculous and it's nice to see a carrier acting rationally.
To avoid this (common) issue, EU regulations now mandate a roaming-fee cutoff at €50 until the account-holder positively indicates their knowledge and acceptance of additional roaming fees. They can also pre-authorize a higher cutoff if they really do expect to be incurring more than €50 in roaming fees and don't want to be cut off, but this must be an explicit opt-in (not the default terms of a data plan). The result is that your losses in the case of unexpected data syncing are at least limited by default. But only within the EU, of course.
exact same thing happened to me in belize to the tune of $1500. i checked with AT&T before my trip and they assured me that belize was covered per my international plan, but then backtracked and told me they specifically said it wasn't covered when i disputed the bill. i clearly remember the call as i was deciding between buying a local sim and just using at&t's roaming plan. lesson learned: always get a local sim. it's cheaper.
I did a bunch of traveling earlier this year and getting local SIM card is pretty easy and cheap (~$20/mo), and has the advantage of allowing local calls. In Bangkok and Kyiv you can get them at any 7-11 or electronics store. Philippines and Prague it was a visit to a carrier. The rough patch was Tokyo, but you can rent a mobile hotspot for a reasonable amount and have it delivered to the airport.
If you're only there for a few days, free roaming is very nice to have, but if you're there a week or more I think it's worth the small effort to get the local SIM. That also allows me to keep Straight Talk prepaid in the US with my own phone. YMMV, but this was the most economical, flexible route for me.
I switched to t-mobile from Verizon. I have actually been really happy with the service. My plan is unlimited data 5 gigs of 4g data/unlimited 3g and 100 minutes of talk time for $30 a month. Every extra minute is .10 over the 100 minutes. So my plan ends up being $50 a month. But compare that to any other carrier and its a much better price. Also, I like that it's a German company and didn't sell out like Verizon giving 1,000,000+ members phone numbers to the NSA.
I'm on a month long trip to Asia right now (today: Sendai), and remembering why I used to keep a tmobile blackberry and BES just for travel. Flat rate $80/mo unlimited edge to the BES (which I used for email and then tunneling IP from my laptop) was worth it even when I only used it one or two months a year; absolutely worth it when I was overseas full time. Sadly I let it lapse and am now playing the "find a local LTE dongle" game, which in Japan is a JPY 1260/day old Huawei LTE android device on SoftBank which is the 5th phone and 8th computing device I'm lugging around on trains and such.
Seriously going to look at MVNO options when I get back; running a pro privacy, pro customer MVNO, ideally based in a country with strong privacy laws, and handsets transparently configured to be safe for customers (even when the local carrier is turning over data..) would be pretty fun.
This will be amazing in Europe. From jan In Eu all carriers have to drop roaming charges and people now are traveling exponentially more than they used to 10-15 years ago. This is big. I know everyone focuses on USA and china bit old continent still has potential ;)
I wonder if they have added more roaming agreements to their network. Last time I was in Norway, there was no coverage at all -- no network, no calls, never mind Internet access -- which I found strange. Usually you will be able to connect to via local network and pay for roaming charges. Norway is all GSM, same frequency band, and my plan has International calling, but I still had to swap out the SIM card for my Norwegian one. Could be a fluke, of course. Edit: Or it may be that pay-as-you-go doesn't provide international roaming.
I love T-Mobile's approach, and the whole reason I use them is because they are the underdog who's doing things a little differently.
I was in Norway as well and I did not get any reception on my T-Mobile phone until I contacted the account holder on our family plan (they were still in the US) and had them add international roaming to our post-paid plan. Immediately afterwards my phone was able to connect to a network, so I think roaming with T-Mobile is opt-in.
It does provide international roaming. At least in the Netherlands I have no problem using my pay-as-you-go plan. However, I had exactly your experience in China: I could only make emergency calls.
Ah, all this roaming here there everywhere discussion reminds me of one of my fundamental wishes for a new startup to tackle: create a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) which essentially just roams everywhere (including the home country) but always picks the strongest signal of all available wireless carriers.
I hate to be in an area and not have coverage. I carry another prepaid sim card around just for that case but obviously that's a different number then. I'll be happy to pay a premium if that was available.
And then maybe one day we can also get rid of the sim cards and just do it in software... I don't get why we still have sim cards.
I have been quite pleased to see T-Mobile continuing to provide AT&T and Verizon with some competition. I sampled T-Mobile for a couple of months with their $30 unlimited data/text plan and was pleasantly surprised with the performance in the LA area - on a Nexus 4 (without LTE), speeds were generally better than on AT&T. The only reason I finally went back to AT&T was for rural coverage, as I do enough traveling that this was an issue. Were it not for that, I would have gladly stayed with T-Mobile.
Okay, I was about to quit T-Mo this winter for Verizon, but I'll stick around a little longer. Points for effort. It's desperately needed to compensate for the shitty coverage.
It'll certainly be huge step forward -- I sometimes go to Japan, and it's hard to find pay phones these days, and they make me jump through a lot of hoops getting prepaid phone there, if that's even possible as a foreigner...
The most interesting part about this to me is the $0.20/min voice price. Not because it would have a direct impact on me or anything like that, but mostly because it seems like in the US, carriers are falling over themselves to offer "unlimited voice" while restricting the data. This is the exact opposite.
[+] [-] aaronbrethorst|12 years ago|reply
[1] http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/19/att-tmobile-merger-dead/
[+] [-] eurleif|12 years ago|reply
I'm not an economist, and I haven't looked into the details of the cell phone market in depth, but here's a possible alternative opinion. I'm not asserting that this is the case; just wondering if it might be.
Would T-Mobile be able to treat customers as well if they were more popular, or are they only in this position because their ratio of customers to cell towers, spectrum, and other capital is lower? And if the latter is true, isn't that an inefficient use of resources, which market forces (i.e. the merger) would have corrected if not for government intervention?
[+] [-] trimbo|12 years ago|reply
[1] - http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/02/t-mobile-takes-3-bill...
[+] [-] skrause|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] praxeologist|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adventured|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikeash|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joelrunyon|12 years ago|reply
In cities - their coverage is VERY good. Countryside & cross country road trips are where they fall off the map, but I've been very happy paying $80 for unlimited call/text/data + No B.S.
T-Mobile is way behind in terms of users & they know it - which means they're making strong plays against the competition. Makes me want to bet on them for no other reason than to force the other carriers to step up their game.
[+] [-] shitlord|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xster|12 years ago|reply
I drove from the Canadian east coast to California with a T-Mobile unlimited plan. For 90% of the trip, I was actually roaming on other carriers' networks. I derived zero value from my payment to T-Mobile since I can't actually use my phone except for 911. Now I'm in San Francisco for half a year and speed is around 0.05Mbps in about 30% of the city. And they're not uninhabited spots of town either.
[+] [-] potatolicious|12 years ago|reply
I rarely leave the city, so the lack of coverage in rural areas doesn't bother me. In NYC I have to say I've noticed a small improvement in reception over AT&T - buildings where I've been dead in the water before now have some connectivity.
So far so good, this new announcement is just icing on the cake, especially as a Canadian expat. It used to be that when visiting home I'd inevitably wind up with one helluva phone bill, and that's just with extremely minimal texting and calling just to herd cats.
[+] [-] mrinterweb|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kamjam|12 years ago|reply
This has actually been the norm in UK for quite some years. Look on t-mobile.co.uk for example, they have a SIM Only plans. As an example:
> The Full Monty (SIM Only), £26/month on 12 month contract = unlimited talk, text + data
> iPhone 5c 16GB, £42/month on 24 month contract = unlimited talk, text + data, £30 for phone
So the same plan, the iPhone effectively costs you £414. That't not actually a bad price, esp if you consider it as finance. But not everyone wants a new phone, e.g. maybe your iPhone 5 is still "good" and you want to wait for the iPhone 6 to come out in a year...
[+] [-] diggum|12 years ago|reply
As soon as this contract is over or work is no longer paying, I am switching back.
[+] [-] yeukhon|12 years ago|reply
Do they already have that for daytime? I think for most carriers out there, if not, all, night time is minute free.
[+] [-] starrhorne|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quink|12 years ago|reply
> While the data is free, it won't be particularly fast. Customers can expect network speeds at around the same level that they get in the US after they are throttled. Chief Marketing Officer Mike Sievert said the average speed customers would get would be around 128 kilobits a second.
Think of it more of an extension of the Kindle 3G business model rather than anything else. The maximum one could theoretically suck through that straw, at 24/7, is 40 GB a month.
[+] [-] _delirium|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nknighthb|12 years ago|reply
When I was in Taiwan, I was handed a prepaid dumbphone and a 4G wireless hotspot with iffy battery life and some indoor coverage issues.
Being able to send/receive SMSs and brief phone calls with my smartphone's home number, and keep up on email and light browsing on my own phone without being at the mercy of the hotspot, would have been very nice, but I was there for ~9 months split into two trips during the course of a year.
I would gladly pay an extra $10-20/month (with $0.20/minute voice) for such capability over an extended period, but that wasn't, and apparently still is not, an option.
[+] [-] freehunter|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nwh|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] craftkiller|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xster|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jasonkester|12 years ago|reply
An example: I flew to the 'states this weekend. Once on the ground, I topped up my American (T-Mobile) sim with a month's worth of credit. (There was no way to do this from abroad since their sims don't work there at all, and their website has a ridiculous country redirect even from your account page).
At the airport, on the way home, I sent a text to my wife letting her know I was on the way. It failed.
I tried again to various permutations of the French number, with absolutely no success. Googling around, it seems that you can't do that with t-mobile. You can't even get them to turn it on, since their "international" packages only work with their contract services. Not just roaming, but even placing a phone call to another country is impossible with pre-paid t-mobile. Sure enough, landing in Paris, the phone was dead dead dead. No "welcome to France" message. No extortionate international roaming charges. Just no ability to make calls at all.
I had to pop my UK sim back in just to be able to use the phone again.
I'm looking forward to the first company (in any country) that truly gets all this. They'll get my business, as well as pretty much all the business from anybody who travels at all.
[+] [-] chrsstrm|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mjn|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] djim|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] liquidcool|12 years ago|reply
If you're only there for a few days, free roaming is very nice to have, but if you're there a week or more I think it's worth the small effort to get the local SIM. That also allows me to keep Straight Talk prepaid in the US with my own phone. YMMV, but this was the most economical, flexible route for me.
[+] [-] dude3|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] r00fus|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aray|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rdl|12 years ago|reply
Seriously going to look at MVNO options when I get back; running a pro privacy, pro customer MVNO, ideally based in a country with strong privacy laws, and handsets transparently configured to be safe for customers (even when the local carrier is turning over data..) would be pretty fun.
[+] [-] tomp|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NemesorZandrak|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adrinavarro|12 years ago|reply
Roaminng charges are hardly going anywhere. And that would be in July 1st… And countries have opposed the measure.
[+] [-] lobster_johnson|12 years ago|reply
I love T-Mobile's approach, and the whole reason I use them is because they are the underdog who's doing things a little differently.
[+] [-] firloop|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hencq|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aCCelerate|12 years ago|reply
I hate to be in an area and not have coverage. I carry another prepaid sim card around just for that case but obviously that's a different number then. I'll be happy to pay a premium if that was available.
And then maybe one day we can also get rid of the sim cards and just do it in software... I don't get why we still have sim cards.
[+] [-] rallison|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fatjokes|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vpeters25|12 years ago|reply
I reported I had barely a signal inside my house, a couple weeks later I had 5 bars.
[+] [-] wandermatt|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leeoniya|12 years ago|reply
::rageface::
[+] [-] trimbo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unsignedint|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nathana|12 years ago|reply