Back at the beginning of May, T-Mobile and MetroPCS announced that they had finalized their deal and that T-Mobile USA was officially taking over the reigns of the country’s largest regional carrier. The deal was first reached in October of 2012, but it had to be approved by the government and shareholders. While T-Mobile remained the smallest nationwide carrier after the acquisition was complete, the company did add very valuable spectrum to its arsenal, as well as 42.5 million new subscribers. Just a month after the deal closed, we’re already starting to see some changes take place, at least according to one report and leaked images.
According to a new report out of PhoneArena, MetroPCS will soon start selling two T-Mobile GSMA/HSPA+ devices. Those devices are the LG Optimus L9, for which we recently saw a successor, as well as the Samsung Galaxy Exhibit. MetroPCS customers will also soon be able to connect GSM and HSPA phones to T-Mobile’s network. This means that people will be able to bring their own unlocked GSM devices to MetroPCS and use them on T-Mobile’s network. All of this is said to happen on June 12th.
For comparison’s sake, and to show how much faster T-Mobile is moving, AT&T for years ran two totally separate networks, dubbed Orange and Blue, after Cingular purchased AT&T Wireless. While T-Mobile will not be merging networks with MetroPCS, it will be shutting the carrier’s CDMA network down and harvesting it for future T-Mobile LTE and HSPA+ networks. It will, however, maintain the MetroPCS brand for prepaid services.
It certainly is a good thing that T-Mobile is moving forward very quickly with its network overhaul, as it is quite a ways behind AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint in terms of LTE coverage and speeds. This also heavily benefits MetroPCS customers as they now get access to a plethora of unlocked phones, such as the Nexus 4, HTC One, Galaxy S4, and Apple iPhone. Anything that benefits the customer is always good, at least in my opinion.
Would you ever consider switching to MetroPCS now that they have such a robust device selection? Let us know down in the comments!
Source: Phone Arena