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T-Mobile Offers Unlimited Data and Calling in Brazil for 2016 Summer Olympics

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T-Mobile has announced that qualifying Simple Choice postpaid customers will automatically receive free unlimited data at up to 4G LTE speeds throughout Brazil during the entire month of August, enabling visitors to celebrate the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro without worrying about roaming charges.

The carrier is also offering free calls within Brazil and to the United States in August, while unlimited texting to over 140 countries continues to be free.


Additionally, T-Mobile will be giving families of U.S. athletes free T-Mobile service and a Samsung Galaxy S7 edge and Samsung Gear 360 camera through October. Those who qualify can email RoamFreeInRio@t-mobile.com to get up to two free smartphones per athlete activated ahead of the 2016 Rio Games.

This is the third major T-Mobile promotion to be announced in less than a month, following free unlimited data throughout Europe this summer and free unlimited data for Pokémon Go for one year. Meanwhile, T-Mobile continues to offer perks such as Binge On and Music Freedom, Data Stash, Carrier Freedom, and Mobile Without Borders.

Article Link: T-Mobile Offers Unlimited Data and Calling in Brazil for 2016 Summer Olympics
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2016/07/21/tmobile-free-unlimited-data-calling-rio-2016/
ZzzzzZzzzzz......

T-Mobile keeps these announcements in order to grab some publicity. In reality, none of them offer much. When one examines the average income of T-Mobile subscribers they find that those that can afford to travel to Brazil aren't the typical T-Mobile customer. Thus, they're giving this offer to very few and it costs them very little. But it does allow them to grab headlines which in turn brings in new business, largely from those with zero plans to go to Brazil and will not benefit from most of these announcements.
 
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With all the free bandwidth that Tmobile is giving for music and video, there may be a point where once can dump home internet service and just tether through your phone. Not there yet, but if we ever get even close to that possibility, I think that could really disrupt the cable business. I that would be a good thing. Today we get mostly bad service and a very high price. A little competition would be awesome. And maybe Tmobile will be the first to throw the rock at the glass house.
 
That's nice of T-Mobile. I wonder if they're going to do anything for all the athletes that get Zika virus?
 
Cuban Missles said:
With all the free bandwidth that Tmobile is giving for music and video, there may be a point where once can dump home internet service and just tether through your phone. Not there yet, but if we ever get even close to that possibility, I think that could really disrupt the cable business. I that would be a good thing. Today we get mostly bad service and a very high price. A little competition would be awesome. And maybe Tmobile will be the first to throw the rock at the glass house.
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That would be the death knell for net neutrality...
 
Noooooo, I had the chance to compete in the Olympics this year and backed out because I've already won so many gold medals. I could have gotten a free phone!!!
 
The only people that need special rates are those real amateur athletes and their family members. Everyone else going down there has plenty of money and don't need special rates.
 
OldSchoolMacGuy said:
ZzzzzZzzzzz......

T-Mobile keeps these announcements in order to grab some publicity. In reality, none of them offer much. When one examines the average income of T-Mobile subscribers they find that those that can afford to travel to Brazil aren't the typical T-Mobile customer. Thus, they're giving this offer to very few and it costs them very little. But it does allow them to grab headlines which in turn brings in new business, largely from those with zero plans to go to Brazil and will not benefit from most of these announcements.
Click to expand...
This screams ignorance and elitism. Lmao
 
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shareef777 said:
Their service may not be the best (still pretty decent for where it's most likely to be used), but customer loyalty/appreciation is something EVERY company needs to take a page out of T-Mobile's playbook. Even Apple.
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Agreed. T-Mobile takes lots of risk, aggressive, and very consumer driven.

At the end of the day, however, it will be all about coverage. T-Mobile is in a great state of transition, with massive expansion plan. However, it takes a lot of time to deploy. Given their past accomplishments, however, I think T-Mobile will have fairly competitive coverage within 2 years.
 
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OldSchoolMacGuy said:
ZzzzzZzzzzz......

T-Mobile keeps these announcements in order to grab some publicity. In reality, none of them offer much. When one examines the average income of T-Mobile subscribers they find that those that can afford to travel to Brazil aren't the typical T-Mobile customer. Thus, they're giving this offer to very few and it costs them very little. But it does allow them to grab headlines which in turn brings in new business, largely from those with zero plans to go to Brazil and will not benefit from most of these announcements.
Click to expand...
I think I understand what you're saying, but help me out if I'm wrong. T-Mobile is a business that needs money to survive who does advertising and offers incentives to keep customers happy and gain new ones... just like every other business ever. And that's a bad thing?
 
It makes you wonder, if T-Moblie had the coverage of ATT or Verizon, would they still be making these deals? I would hope yes and why aren't ATT and verizon considering some of these deals? (I have my opinion on that last part)
 
nutmac said:
Agreed. T-Mobile takes lots of risk, aggressive, and very consumer driven.

At the end of the day, however, it will be all about coverage. T-Mobile is in a great state of transition, with massive expansion plan. However, it takes a lot of time to deploy. Given their past accomplishments, however, I think T-Mobile will have fairly competitive coverage within 2 years.
Click to expand...

These are very aggressive moves by T-Mobile, and it will work to attract new customers. That means a growing business. Can't beat that!
 
nutmac said:
Agreed. T-Mobile takes lots of risk, aggressive, and very consumer driven.

At the end of the day, however, it will be all about coverage. T-Mobile is in a great state of transition, with massive expansion plan. However, it takes a lot of time to deploy. Given their past accomplishments, however, I think T-Mobile will have fairly competitive coverage within 2 years.
Click to expand...

They have really great city coverage already. My wife's iPhone and my iPad are on T-Mobile and my iPhone is on ATT (work provided). We always have the same coverage/speed when we're within dense enough cities. We're heading out on a cross country road trip tonight and we both know her phone is all but worthless on such a trip.
 
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shareef777 said:
They have really great city coverage already. My wife's iPhone and my iPad are on T-Mobile and my iPhone is on ATT (work provided). We always have the same coverage/speed when we're within dense enough cities. We're heading out on a cross country road trip tonight and we both know her phone is all but worthless on such a trip.
Click to expand...
Metro coverage is mostly good, sometimes great if 700 MHz band 12 extend range is fully deployed.

Rural areas are typically crapshoot, however. Especially in California where I live. On the positive note, T-Mobile is in the process of converting all 1900 MHz EDGE towers to LTE (band 2).

In California, LTE band 2 upgrade is supposed to complete by end of this year. 700 MHz extended range LTE (band 12) in all of CA (areas with a license anyway) will complete by middle of 2017.

Anyway, the outlook looks promising, but it is a bit painful to sit through. At least T-Mobile is throwing us some bones here and there.
 
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OldSchoolMacGuy said:
ZzzzzZzzzzz......

T-Mobile keeps these announcements in order to grab some publicity. In reality, none of them offer much. When one examines the average income of T-Mobile subscribers they find that those that can afford to travel to Brazil aren't the typical T-Mobile customer. Thus, they're giving this offer to very few and it costs them very little. But it does allow them to grab headlines which in turn brings in new business, largely from those with zero plans to go to Brazil and will not benefit from most of these announcements.
Click to expand...

I fly over 2,000,000+ miles, Platinum for life. I'm a T-Mobile customer, I like to have free data and text where ever I land.
 
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OldSchoolMacGuy said:
ZzzzzZzzzzz......

T-Mobile keeps these announcements in order to grab some publicity. In reality, none of them offer much. When one examines the average income of T-Mobile subscribers they find that those that can afford to travel to Brazil aren't the typical T-Mobile customer. Thus, they're giving this offer to very few and it costs them very little. But it does allow them to grab headlines which in turn brings in new business, largely from those with zero plans to go to Brazil and will not benefit from most of these announcements.
Click to expand...

I travel to Europe a lot and love the free data and text when I'm there (the 20c/min calls are nice too when something on the trip goes awry). I was in Denmark a few weeks ago and got a text from TMO saying something along the lines of "Happy Summer, instead of the usual 2g data, enjoy LTE on us." Name any other carrier who even comes close to trying to be good to their customers? I laugh at my VZW and ATT using friends while they fumble with SIM cards or buy 100MB of data for obscene prices.

nutmac said:
Agreed. T-Mobile takes lots of risk, aggressive, and very consumer driven.

At the end of the day, however, it will be all about coverage. T-Mobile is in a great state of transition, with massive expansion plan. However, it takes a lot of time to deploy. Given their past accomplishments, however, I think T-Mobile will have fairly competitive coverage within 2 years.
Click to expand...

I live in the south and my TMO coverage has always been the same or better than when I had ATT. The LTE speeds are also better than anyone else in the office with either VZW or ATT. Coverage is very much a regional or personal (where do you spend the most time) thing depending on what carriers merged with who and when. If you're in the northeast, then VZW was really the only option for years. That's changing, but takes time.
 
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OldSchoolMacGuy said:
ZzzzzZzzzzz......

T-Mobile keeps these announcements in order to grab some publicity. In reality, none of them offer much. When one examines the average income of T-Mobile subscribers they find that those that can afford to travel to Brazil aren't the typical T-Mobile customer. Thus, they're giving this offer to very few and it costs them very little. But it does allow them to grab headlines which in turn brings in new business, largely from those with zero plans to go to Brazil and will not benefit from most of these announcements.
Click to expand...


1) I live in one of the highest per capita income areas in the U.S. T-Mobile owned stores are all around including the expensive rent shopping areas. But if you are going to use the avg. income of T-Mob users then please present your data that they are low income.

2) Even if they are low income travel to Brazil is not necessarily expensive. Also, having attended the Olympics before, tickets to 99% of events are affordable, even most basketball, boxing, swimming, gymnastics sessions. Like other marquee events, there are two strata of attendees - business, entertainment, and political VIPs and everyone else. Everyone else is literally everyone else from multiple income strata.

3) But even if this offer was only of use to a few, so is a promotional contest with a 1:1000 chance of winning. Business do these kind of promotions to get attention, yes, that is the point, not to give free stuff away. It's just that giving the free stuff away can be cheaper and more effective than traditional advertising.

4) And if you can't benefit from it, well it's not the reason you signed up for T-Mob anyway so no loss to you anyway. Why grouse that someone other than you can gain from this deal?
 
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