iPhone-Related Customer Churn an 'Area of Concern' for T-Mobile USA

MacRumors · Nov 10, 2011

As highlighted by AllThingsD, T-Mobile USA acknowledged yesterday in discussion of its third quarter earnings that the lack of an iPhone 4S offering for the carrier may have an impact on customer retention, labeling churn rates as an "area of concern".

"Earnings improved as we continued to focus on making smartphones affordable to all Americans through our unlimited Value plans, improvements to our 4G network, and an expanding portfolio of 4G devices," T-Mobile USA CEO Philipp Humm said in a statement. "Discipline on the cost side contributed to year-on- year margin improvement, while postpay churn, in particular related to the iPhone 4S launches by competitors, will continue to be an area of concern."

With Sprint adding the iPhone last month, T-Mobile is the last of the four major U.S. carriers to not offer the device, putting it at a significant disadvantage due to the iPhone's popularity. T-Mobile USA has issued several public statements about its lack of an iPhone offering, acknowledging that the decision on a T-Mobile iPhone is up to Apple while touting other smartphone devices it does carry.

The iPhone's absence on T-Mobile is due in large part to the carrier's network technology, which while being the same GSM standard used in the rest of the world, runs on different frequency bands from most other GSM carriers. Consequently, Apple would have to develop modified hardware to support T-Mobile's network, something the company has so far declined to do on more than a prototype basis.

Also likely affecting Apple's plans are questions over the long-term fate of T-Mobile, as AT&T is currently in the process of trying to acquire the carrier. Should the acquisition be approved, AT&T would in time merge the networks of the two carriers and with the move to LTE, a separate iPhone supporting T-Mobile USA's current standards would eventually become unnecessary.

Article Link: iPhone-Related Customer Churn an 'Area of Concern' for T-Mobile USA

macinnv · Nov 10, 2011

Wow they are at least doing better than Sprint has been. They are doing something right staying afloat without the iPhone.

andiwm2003 · Nov 10, 2011

i hope the FCC allows them to use the other GSM frequencies. It's absolutely anti free market to have a monopoly of ATT on these frequencies. As customer you have no choice than to sign up with ATT as soon as you have a GSM phone.

macinnv · Nov 10, 2011

andiwm2003 said:
i hope the FCC allows them to use the other GSM frequencies. It's absolutely anti free market to have a monopoly of ATT on these frequencies. As customer you have no choice than to sign up with ATT as soon as you have a GSM phone.

That would be a great idea, do youi know if this is this being considered by the FCC?

Xendren · Nov 10, 2011

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If this is true about the iPhone requiring special hardware, I wonder how T-Mobile actually had a lot of iPhones running on their service unofficially?

cvaldes · Nov 10, 2011

Those gray-market iPhones have voice service as well as the slower EDGE data, not 3G data.

The MacRumors article is incorrect. T-Mobile USA uses the same GSM frequencies as AT&T. It's the UTMS/HSPA frequencies that are non-standard.

macinnv · Nov 10, 2011

Xendren said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

If this is true about the iPhone requiring special hardware, I wonder how T-Mobile actually had a lot of iPhones running on their service unofficially?

They've said they have over 1 million iPhones on their network. You can run an iPhone on T-Mobile's network but you only get Edge (2G).

Spock · Nov 10, 2011

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Xendren said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

If this is true about the iPhone requiring special hardware, I wonder how T-Mobile actually had a lot of iPhones running on their service unofficially?

I'm on a factory unlocked iPhone 4 with T-Mobile. I don't have visual voicemail and nothing faster than EDGE but I'm always on wifi and I didn't have visual voicemail on my Galaxy S the iPhone replaced, I'm happy.

Rend It · Nov 10, 2011

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Xendren said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

If this is true about the iPhone requiring special hardware, I wonder how T-Mobile actually had a lot of iPhones running on their service unofficially?

That's because the iPhones run on Tmobile's EDGE network, not the 3G/4G channels.

It's not a technical issue. Why would a phone that runs on frequencies from 850 MHz to 2100 MHz have extreme difficulty only at 1700 MHz? Apple didn't support Tmobile's network because it wasn't cost effective (to Apple).

surf2snow1 · Nov 10, 2011

Wasn't there an article a couple weeks ago that said they didn't like apple's terms for getting the iPhone? Now they're bringing up customer churn? Sounds like they need to put up the money to get the iPhone or don't complain about churn.

cvam1985 · Nov 10, 2011

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Really makes you wonder if it was some sort of conspiracy involving AT&T's acquisition plans. Then again , doesn't TMo WANT to be acquired?

How hard really would it have been to include AWS support? And has it been officially proven that the 4S doesn't ? Thought I read somewhere a software patch could theoretically enable it as some thought the 4S has the right hardware

carlvz · Nov 10, 2011

Ask Apple to offer T-Mobile the next iPhone

Hey all. I am also a T-Mobile customer.

Do you want Apple to offer T-Mobile the next iPhone? Tell them.

Go to
http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

Tell them you would buy a new iPhone if it was offered for T-Mobile.
It's important that they know that their customers want this.

cvaldes · Nov 10, 2011

cvam1985 said:
How hard really would it have been to include AWS support? And has it been officially proven that the 4S doesn't ? Thought I read somewhere a software patch could theoretically enable it as some thought the 4S has the right hardware

I have not seen any confirmation that the iPhone 4S has a baseband processor that supports the AWS frequency. Please cite a source if you think otherwise.

In addition to a compatible baseband that supports the AWS frequency, the handset would also need a power amp for that frequency.

Note that just because a feature is listed on a component spec sheet doesn't guarantee that the functionality will be implemented. The iPhone and iPod touch have featured chips that support FM radio for quite a while, yet the ancillary circuitry doesn't exist, hence no FM radio on those devices.

macinnv · Nov 10, 2011

surf2snow1 said:
Wasn't there an article a couple weeks ago that said they didn't like apple's terms for getting the iPhone? Now they're bringing up customer churn? Sounds like they need to put up the money to get the iPhone or don't complain about churn.

That was US Cellular I believe.

blue22 · Nov 10, 2011

Don't believe the hype...

The potential merger with AT&T has cast a huge shadow over T-Mobile's future and primarily due to this I believe Apple decided to wait out the final verdict before possibly offering T-mo the iPhone. From a technical standpoint it isn't much of a problem for Apple to get the iPhone operating on 1700 Mhz frequencies so that's just a bunch of baloney + part of the reason for the merger is for AT&T to shutdown it's only GSM competitor in the USA and expand their spectrum. So it's strictly a political issue here not a technical one for :apple:

.

cvaldes said:
Those gray-market iPhones have voice service as well as the slower EDGE data, not 3G data.

The MacRumors article is incorrect. T-Mobile USA uses the same GSM frequencies as AT&T. It's the UTMS/HSPA frequencies that are non-standard.

+1

kwikdeth · Nov 10, 2011

cvaldes said:
I have not seen any confirmation that the iPhone 4S has a baseband processor that supports the AWS frequency. Please cite a source if you think otherwise.

In addition to a compatible baseband that supports the AWS frequency, the handset would also need a power amp for that frequency.

well the original suspicion was that the 4S would carry the same chipset as the Verizon 4, which is the Qualcomm MDM6600, which does have baseband support for AWS frequencies:

http://www.howardforums.com/showthr...i-chip-in-Verizon-s-iPhone-4-supports-1700Mhz

You can clearly see AWS as available in WCDMA section.
Now, two things, you are correct in that its useless for the baseband to support it if there is no radio hardware to go along with it. Secondly, the 4S uses the undocumented "MDM6610" variation, and who knows if it covers the same breadth of bands that the 6600 does.
My suspicion is that if they wanted to enable an iPhone 4S for tMobile, it would come at the cost of some other bandwidth, as in, it would be a phone that only worked with ATT and tMobile but not CDMA, or CDMA and AWS. It might have been too cost prohibitive to develop a phone that could work on all three technologies simultaneously.

[edit] i think my suspicion is confirmed by text on the bottom of that graphic, "Only specific band combinations are supported by each software build"

Dun Properly · Nov 10, 2011

How timely...

I just left T-Mobile after 13 years for Verizon and an Iphone 4s this week.

TehFalcon · Nov 11, 2011

Gosh I Hope the iPhone goes to T-Mobile...

dodge this · Nov 13, 2011

Dun Properly said:
I just left T-Mobile after 13 years for Verizon and an Iphone 4s this week.

I left Verizon for T Mobile after floating along for months post contract, hoping they would get the iPhone.

They didn't.

Just got done paying my ETF with TMobile after going into a Sprint store last night and getting an iPhone 4s. If they were concerned with churn, they sure didn't sound like it. When i was on Sprint before and jumped to Verizon, Sprint offered me everything and the kitchen sink to stay with them. Tmoble - not a single fluck was given.

I will miss seeing the T Mobile hunny everywhere. I won't miss the crappy reception tho...

YMark · Nov 14, 2011

dodge this said:
Just got done paying my ETF with TMobile after going into a Sprint store last night and getting an iPhone 4s. If they were concerned with churn, they sure didn't sound like it. When i was on Sprint before and jumped to Verizon, Sprint offered me everything and the kitchen sink to stay with them. Tmoble - not a single fluck was given.

If you wanted an iPhone, just what the hell did you expect TMO to do? I'm in the same boat (I'm leaving TMO for the iPhone as soon as contract over), but if I want a Big Mac, I'm not going to get one at Taco Bell. Disclaimer......... I hate both places, but TB will do in a pinch.

iPhone-Related Customer Churn an 'Area of Concern' for T-Mobile USA

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