So much for the view that keeping AT&T separate from T-Mobile would be better for business and better for competition. It looks like both companies are losing out, T-Mobile with the exodus of customers and AT&T with the loss of an expanded network.
Eh, I don't think it's much of a problem. T-Mobile just announced they would beging building an LTE network, which is made possible by that nice $3billion they got from AT&T. The merger was probably what kept them from getting the iPhone, and this could be there year.
As a former TMO employee this doesn't suprise me at all. It's not the lack of an iPhone that has hurt this company this lack of direction.
TMO has been way too focused on being "Budget friendly" as well as for a long time the retention reps would just give away high end phones at a loss just to retain customers. In the end its about the bottom line
They should have taken a page from AT&T and Verizon's book. Oh well too late.
So you think they should price gouge people and raise rates to attract new customers? Yeah, that would sure get me to sign up with them. NOT.
Their business strategy is great... it's their coverage and device offerings that are their Achilles heel, and clueless employees.
Why can't they just shut down their 2G Edge network and deploy LTE on their 1900Mhz spectrum.
Then they could have LTE with UMTS (HSPA) as their fallback. No one wants to use EDGE anymore. Any customers that happen to have a GSM/EDGE only phone could get a free 3G phone offered by T-Mo.
Nice idea, but Edge is their fall back for 3G. It's not viable. They could ditch it later on, but not right now. Same reason everyone keeps their edge networks. When 3G is out of range, you need it. Companies also don't want to pay data roaming to one another if they can help it.
When LTE is fully deployed, I can see Edge getting the nails in it's coffin because then 3G can be the fall back. Edge covers pretty much everyone. Even 3G still has big gaps in lots of places.
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There HAS TO be a reason why TMobile is the only major carrier left out of the 4S launch. They either did not want to pay the money or something...
It can't be a technical reason. There are way too many people on T-Mobile with iPhones already using all of these hacks...
IPhone didn't have the radios to support TMOs non standard frequency.
Apple would have to have a whole manufacturing line just for T-Mobile because they'd have to have different parts in them. With T-Mobile looking like they would be merging with AT&T, it probably didn't make a lot of sene for Apple at the time to invest in that, especially with adding Sprint into the fold. That would have been a lot going on in manufacturing at one time.
Apple told TMO no. I suspect that with the merger dead, it's possible it could happen this year.
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Last year they lost 471,000 for about the same quarter time frame.
This suggests the exodus is accelerating.
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Yes, but that will not stop loss of customers. It will only delay the inevitable if they do not get iPhone.
These numbers are telling, but not telling everything. That 471,000 doesn't include new subscribers, nor does the 802,000 from the main article.
What's concerning is that at the end of the day, they keep coming up about 100,000 or so customers less each quarter after new subscribers.