While other carriers are increasing the pricing of its unlimited plans, and offering newer plans that cost more, T-Mobile is sticking to its guns and will not be raising its unlimited plan price. This is according to T-Mobile’s Chief Financial Officer, Braxton Carter. CNET sat down with Carter this week, after T-Mobile posted another huge quarter, with over a million adds, and he stated that T-Mobile isn’t “pursuing a monetization path.” Carter also noted that “the benefits of creating more subscribers outweigh the short term benefit of tweaking (average revenue per user).”
T-Mobile has been adding over a million customers each quarter for over five and a half years now, and the company’s subscribers have more than doubled since John Legere took over as CEO. The carrier has been doing all sorts of things to make it easier for the customer, and raising prices isn’t one of those things. It currently offers a single unlimited plan, which is called “T-Mobile ONE”. While there are a few variants to that plan, it is just a single plan, and that’s because T-Mobile wants to make it simple for its customers, and it has worked out well. While its competitors – AT&T, Verizon and Sprint – all have more unlimited plans.
While T-Mobile won’t be raising rates on its unlimited plan, the company’s COO, Mike Sievert did note that they will be aggressively promoting 600MHz-compatible smartphones. Which means they will likely be discounted rather heavily from time to time. This is so that they can get as many customers as possible onto its newer spectrum, which covers the majority of the US and will provide better in-building coverage. This is also a good thing for T-Mobile and its shareholders, as that is where the money is made these days – in selling actually products like smartphones and tablets.