Last year, fall of 2012. T-Mobile got a brand new CEO following AT&T failing to acquire T-Mobile. That CEO was none other than John Legere, who is quite comical to say the least. That was the start of 12 months of a 180-degree change for the fourth largest US carrier. T-Mobile and MetroPCS also announced a merger that has now taken place. That’s really just the tip of the iceberg for T-Mobile in the past twelve months. They’ve also began rolling out their 4G LTE network at a record pace. Having over 160 million people covered with their fast LTE network. T-Mobile is working to have 200 million covered by the end of the year, and at this rate they might just hit 250. But there’s more.
T-Mobile also got rid of two-year contracts. While their new plans are a bit controversial, once they are explained they are really good plans. Then this summer T-Mobile announced a new upgrade plan called JUMP!. While you do have to pay monthly for JUMP, it’s really genius. JUMP is $10 per month and includes your typical handset insurance and allows you to upgrade your phone twice a year. Now carriers offer insurance between $8-15/month. So this pricing was very reasonable at least in my opinion. That led to Verizon and AT&T offering their various “Upgrade plans” which were EDGE and Next respectively. Which seemed to be much worse than T-Mobile’s JUMP plan, at least on paper.
Then there’s T-Mobile’s CEO. If you’ve watched any of T-Mobile’s press events, then you know how great of a CEO John Legere really is. He’s not afraid to speak his mind at all. He takes numerous jabs at his competitors, especially AT&T recently. One of my favorite lines is in this video (down below) that The Verge put together when T-Mobile announced no more contracts. Mr Legere is also one of the first CEO’s of a wireless carrier (that I know of) that has his own personal Twitter account. He often replies to customers and takes jabs at AT&T, Sprint and Verizon. Which was kind of expected.
So why is T-Mobile the most feared carrier in the wireless industry? Simply because team magenta isn’t afraid to try new things. Their UNcarrier strategy seems to be all about getting attention. Which they’ve definitely done. When I switched to T-Mobile last November, I didn’t know all this UNcarrier stuff would be happening, but boy am I glad I switched. As much as Verizon and even AT&T enjoy trying to bully the T-Mobile fans, they are scared. T-Mobile just added over a million new subscribers in Q2, which is a huge change from them normally losing customers. Where are those customers coming from? Mostly AT&T. Which has been T-Mobile’s biggest target as of late. The other carriers are scared of what T-Mobile has in store for phase 3 of the UNcarrier. But from what I’ve heard it has to do with their coverage and how fast they can improve it. Of course, that comes from an unconfirmed source, so we’ll have to wait until this fall.
How many of you have or are planning to make the switch to T-Mobile?