So, last night T-Mobile made a lot of announcements with their new Uncarrier 5 event, that follows their Uncarrier 3.0 and 4.0 which eventually rolled into their Uncarrier 6 strategy as well. So, we can call last night’s event Uncarrier 5-6. Anyways, last night T-Mobile made three big announcements, mostly circled around their network and how they plan to make their network the best in the US at the most reasonable prices of all their competitors.

T-Mobile’s Uncarrier 5.0 Event, Image Credit: The Verge

Let’s talk about one of the most interesting things T-Mobile has announced so far at the event, and that’s their 7 day free test drive of T-Mobile’s network. T-Mobile’s John Legere basically announced that anyone that wants to try T-Mobile out can do so with an iPhone for free for 7 days to see whether or not the network is up to their expectations. And even more importantly, if it is better than what they’re getting with their current carrier. With this strategy, T-Mobile is being brilliant because one of the easiest ways to sell people something is by letting them try it themselves. And the truth is that its very hard to know whether or not you want to switch to a carrier without actually trying it for yourself. By giving people iPhones to try out the network T-Mobile solves this problem and already puts a device in people’s hands that they’ll likely want to keep anyways. This is something that none of the other carriers are doing and brings down the barrier for consumers to test out the network before they commit, which many people worry about when it comes to T-Mobile. T-Mobile was infamous for horrible coverage and nowadays, most of those issues are resolved but some people don’t know that and this is a perfect way for people to test that out.

T-Mobile Test Drive

In addition to the T-Mobile 7 Day Test Drive, they also announced that they would be further accelerating their rollout of VoLTE and the initial roll-out of Wideband LTE which is just 15 MHz+15 MHz carrier aggregation feature that should allow speeds in excess of 100 Mbps. T-Mobile has tested speeds that nearly read 150 Mbps, but unfortunately for my market T-Mobile is limiting users to 40 Mbps, which makes it a bit difficult to use any sort of Wideband features, even if my phone’s cellular modem supports it.  Currently, 16 of T-Mobile’s markets have enough spectrum to be able to support 15 MHz + 15 MHz carrier aggregation and they will rapidly continue to roll this out as they continue to update their network. It is nice to see the carriers finally supporting carrier aggregation as devices like the recently announced Samsung Galaxy S5 LTE-A will make good use of the network’s carrier aggregation features.

The below image is a Speedtest that someone took while at the T-Mobile Uncarrier 5.0 event, Myriam Joire, who was able to test with the network that was available inside the venue. We’ve got permission to use this screenshot so that you guys can see for yourselves exactly what kinds of speeds are possible in the near future or right now depending on where you live (see the list above).

Carrier Aggregation – Image courtesy of @Tnkgrl (Myriam Joire)

There were also a recent set of nationwide speed tests of networks across the country and T-Mobile came in first or second in many of them, including PCMag’s own which found T-Mobile almost on par with Verizon, who charges significantly more and has much less pro-consumer policies. And if you look at the tested speeds below, in the San Diego test you can see that T-Mobile had the best average speeds in all tests which really is what matters most when you talk about network speeds since the average is what you will usually see, as opposed to the top speed or slowest speed. However, in San Diego, T-Mobile is also limiting users to 40 Mbps (as I have been complaining about) and can now confirm that PCMag also had the same experience that I have.

In addition to their accelerated LTE Wideband roll-out, T-Mobile is also rolling out more of their Voice over LTE (VoLTE). T-Mobile is looking to beat their competitors to the punch with their HD voice/VoLTE features that would enable you to have very high quality voice in addition to sharing that signal over your data connection, reducing the amount of radios that have to stay on while a phone is connected to the network. The significantly improved audio will only be available on certain devices, but since T-Mobile announced their VoLTE roll-out they have already launched VoLTE in 15 markets and are expecting to launch nationwide by the end of the year.

In addition to the network improvements and the 7 Day Test Drive, T-Mobile made a pretty significant announcement which they call Uncarrier 6.0 by ‘setting your music free’. Essentially, what T-Mobile is doing is that they are no longer counting music streaming against your monthly data plan if you don’t have an unlimited data plan. The apps that T-Mobile currently will not count towards your monthly data plan usage are: Pandora, Rhapsody, iHeartRadio, iTunes Radio, Slacker, and Spotify. On top of that, T-Mobile will allow users to vote for music streaming apps that aren’t currently included, which will likely add Google Play Music which oddly isn’t included on T-Mobile’s list of ‘approved’ apps. This is a pretty significant move for T-Mobile to make because a lot of people’s data plans get used up quite a bit by music streaming applications, especially Spotify when you use the high quality feature which can chew up a gigabyte a month or more of data on its own.

Overall, all of these developments are welcome ones by consumers, but there are some problems with T-Mobile’s music streaming pertaining to Net Neutrality that we’ll be addressing in another article.

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Once again, the T-Mobile and Sprint deal continues to move forward now that we have an actual purchase price. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the general terms of the deal between Sprint and T-Mobile have been worked out and that the two companies have agreed to a $32 billion sale of T-Mobile, which actually seems a bit low when you consider that T-Mobile’s current market cap is $27 billion and they are getting a mere 20% premium over their current price.

This deal has gotten a lot of regulatory flak before it ever happened and will likely continue to as the two companies try to push the deal through. While few exact details are known, there is a very high likelihood that we could see the Sprint brandname go away in favor of T-Mobile’s and Sprint’s Dan Hesse replaced by T-Mobile’s John Legere. Speaking of Legere, he’s been probably one of the most outspoken CEOs in carrier history. And Sprint hasn’t been left out of his continuous Twitter bashings including this one that might come back to bite him…

Remember when people actually liked @sprint? Yeah, me either. #SprintLikeHell

— John Legere (@JohnLegere) March 6, 2014

 

The real truth of the matter is that T-Mobile’s CEO has said some pretty nasty things about Sprint, yet the company continues to move forward with the acquisition of T-Mobile by Sprint. There’s a very good chance that Sprint will take on the T-Mobile name and Legere as CEO, but it still doesn’t change the fact that most of Legere’s criticisms are accurate and while sometimes over the top, warranted.

This also does not address the biggest problem this merger will likely face, which is the regulatory approval from the FCC, DoJ and FTC. If any of those three government agencies doesn’t approve the deal, it simply won’t happen. Sprint’s parent company, Softbank, believes that it is a necessary and justified purchase after they paid $20.1 billion for Sprint. While this deal for $32 billion is vastly larger in scale, Softbank is buying a very capable competitor and one that is stealing their competitors. Furthermore, T-Mobile has a marketcap of $27 billion, which makes the $32 billion offer a 20% premium on the current market cap. The problem with this is that T-Mobile is in a much better position than Sprint right now and they’re poised to replace Sprint as #3 carrier in the US very soon. Especially when you look at the fact that T-Mobile has already surpassed Sprint as the #3 smartphone buyer in the US.

Also, let’s remember that T-Mobile’s previous attempted merger with AT&T didn’t get regulatory approval and that offer was for significantly more money ($39 billion) and when T-Mobile was a significantly weaker competitor. It just seems a bit odd that T-Mobile is now going for less money than they did when AT&T made them an offer even when they’re vastly bigger and more competitive than back then. It just doesn’t seem like this deal is big enough or good enough for T-Mobile to just walk away from essentially walking all over their competitors unless this was their plan all along… which I don’t think it was. T-Mobile’s strategy is sustainable, contrary to what everyone else in the industry (that’s for the merger) would lead you to believe. T-Mobile does not need Sprint to succeed, because they are ultimately a very broken dead weight on any potential merger.

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Since most people’s contracts are usually 2 years long, you don’t usually see any significant movements of subscribers from one carrier to another. They happen slowly and quarterly, after all, it would take at least 8 quarters for a company to theoretically lose all of their subscribers if every single person wanted to leave. So, it comes as little surprise that Sprint still holds the numbers 3 spot in terms of subscribers when compared to T-Mobile. Based on T-Mobile’s last earnings call, they ended the first quarter of this year up 2.4 million with nearly 50 million customers, coming ever closer to Sprint’s 54 million. And if you take into consideration T-Mobile’s JUMP program and the millions of customers that are involved in that, it seems logical that T-Mobile would be buying more phones from manufacturers. Also, keep in mind that T-Mobile also offers a no-contract plan option and actually encourages a lot of users to buy their owns outright and just pay the base price of T-Mobile’s service.

According to Reuters, the fact that they had added more subscribers than any other carrier in the US significantly added to this overtaking of Sprint. T-Mobile bought 6 million smartphones in the first quarter of this year while Sprint only bought 5 million, according to Neil Shah of Counterpoint Technology Market Research. There wasn’t much other useful information from Reuters or Neil Shah in the article, although one can surmise that if a carrier is ordering more phones than their larger competitor that they’re clearly doing more business ans signing up more customers for plans. And now that T-Mobile is selling more phones than Sprint, its merely a matter of time until they surpass Sprint in subscribers as well. However, that might change if the T-Mobile-Sprint merger/acquisition is approved by the DoJ and FTC.

This is also possibly because T-Mobile is also a leader in technology, adopting certain technologies like VoLTE ahead of their competitors, especially Sprint who has yet to deploy enough of an LTE network to even consider the idea of VoLTE. T-Mobile is also vastly faster and cheaper than Sprint in a lot of scenarios so, I have a feeling that a lot of T-Mobile’s customers are AT&T and Sprint customers, which could be why Softbank, Sprint’s parent, want to buy them.

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T-Mobile is the first to roll out their VoLTE network starting with Seattle today, followed by AT&T and Verizon tomorrow. However, these are not nation-wide deployments as they will be slowly rolling VoLTE (Voice over LTE) out slowly across their networks in very specific markets little by little, eventually reaching full network saturation. Additionally, it appears as though there are only certain devices on each network that will be able to utilize VoLTE and those devices also vary from carrier to carrier. But ultimately, the good thing about VoLTE deployments is that it does mean that users on all three carriers will be able to communicate in high quality voice at the same time as they download data, while using the same connection for both. This means that Verizon users will finally be able to make and receive calls while using their data and should free up some spectrum in the future to be refarmed for LTE.

We actually heard from some industry insiders that Verizon’s VoLTE network has actually been up and running on a nearly national scale for quite some time but they simply couldn’t get it to work properly, which explains the slow roll out from Verizon. Verizon is traditionally one of the first companies to launch a new technology and to do in on a large scale. When they launched their LTE network they turned it on simultaneously in 32 “football” markets and it was incredibly fast. Now, however, with VoLTE they appear to be taking longer and aren’t necessarily leading, even though T-Mobile’s official roll out coming a day before Verizon and AT&T’s isn’t really that big of a deal.

In terms of AT&T’s plans, they plan to begin the roll out of their VoLTE network starting tomorrow. Ironically, our only source for this is based upon the fact that a rumor from Engadget stated that AT&T would beat Verizon to launching their VoLTE network, but nowhere mentions T-Mobile or even MetroPCS (who actually launched theirs in 2012). Who is missing from all this talk of VoLTE? Sprint. Sure, AT&T and Verizon are both big and rolling out VoLTE isn’t easy, we know that both carriers have been having problems and those problems are probably very similar on both networks. However, T-Mobile’s network is likely going to roll out more VoLTE markets than AT&T or Verizon will and probably in a shorter period of time because they have what many believe to be a more to-spec network. However, this doesn’t change the fact that Sprint’s LTE network is simply so weak and sparse that a VoLTE network is merely impossible to consider until their network actually reaches acceptable levels of service. Or at least somewhere comparable to T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T.

Now, if you happen to be one of the blessed souls that reside within the great city of Seattle, and are a T-Mobile customer, then you must have one of the three following devices in order to be able to use T-Mobile’s new VoLTE. To experience VoLTE, you must have either an LG G Flex, a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 or a Samsung Galaxy Light. T-Mobile customers in Seattle just need to go into device “Settings,” “General” and “About device” to get the latest Software Update. Once you get that update, you should be able to experience this new Rich Communications Service on your device and use LTE for both voice and data and very likely experience a much higher quality of voice service.

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