Newsletter 
T-Mobile announced in December that it was buying Layer3 TV, and would be building its own streaming TV service. The deal closed last month, and now through a 10-K filing with the SEC, all of the details of the deal are out for the public to see. Basically, T-Mobile paid $325 million to acquire Layer3 TV, which is now a subsidiary of T-Mobile US. Furthermore, it will be including Layer3 TV’s earnings in its quarterly earnings report beginning with Q1 2018 (that earnings report should be out in early May). Layer3 TV’s current CEO, Jeff Binder is now part of T-Mobile, and is in charge of its new TV unit. That means that Binder is also part of T-Mobile’s senior management team. Along with Binder, about 200 Layer3 TV employees have joined the T-Mobile team.
This acquisition is a pretty big deal for T-Mobile, especially after the company repeatedly said that it wasn’t going to create its own video service, and said that Verizon and AT&T were wasting their time on Go90 and DIRECTV NOW respectively. But the carrier’s tune has changed, apparently, and will be creating its own streaming TV service, which should debut sometime in 2018. T-Mobile decided to purchase Layer3 TV for this because of its technology. Layer3 TV already has an IP-based TV service, which offers better data usage and can stream pretty well on slower connections. Which would mean that customers can stream TV basically anywhere, even in areas without 4G LTE.
T-Mobile’s TV service is going to roll out later this year, at least that is T-Mobile’s plan as of right now. No pricing or plans have been announced, but with T-Mobile being the “Un-Carrier” you can expect that the prices and plans will be competitive with other streaming TV services available right now – like DIRECTV NOW, PlayStation VUE, Sling TV and YouTube TV. While T-Mobile has not confirmed this, it would not be surprising to see T-Mobile bundle this TV service with its existing plans, or even offer it for free to its customers on the Simple Choice plan. But that’s all speculation right now, and we should know more in the coming months.