T-Mobile USA Blames Lack of iPhone for Customer Loss in 4Q 2011

[swift93]

H2O and Good2Go will both work with ATT iPhones and doesn't require jail breaking at a considerable saving.

I pay $50 a month for unlimited phone, text and 100 MMS plus 600mb of data at 3G speed. If I need more data it's available during the month for $5 per 500mb.

The only drawback is the MMS. I can't receive pictures, but can send them. To receive it must be sent to email...big deal.

 

[MacAddict1978]

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.
-----------

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.

----------

Last year they lost 471,000 for about the same quarter time frame.

This suggests the exodus is accelerating.

----------



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.

 

[yeah]

The current iPhone 4S will not work on TM with 3G speed.

Yes it can (in some cites)
http://www.tmonews.com/2011/12/unlo...ing-on-t-mobiles-3g-network-its-true-sort-of/

 

[dukebound85]

According to the discussion on this article, the answer is the AT&T Straight Talk SIM will work on locked AT&T handsets. You do not need to jailbreak and unlock your iPhone. The Straight Talk website also is worded that AT&T phones will work with their AT&T compatible SIM.

I bought a factory-unlocked iPhone 4S from Apple at full retail, so it doesn't really concern me.

The biggest cons of using Straight Talk are: no Visual Voicemail, no MMS without jailbreaking and hacking, relatively poor customer service at Straight Talk.

For sure, a GoPhone SIM will work in an AT&T iPhone without unlocking.

Just so I am correct in my thinking...is a GoPhone sim the one you use in the iPhone for StraightTalk?

 

[cvaldes]

No.

I am using the GoPhone service, not Straight Talk. I'm paying about $12 per month for very light cellular voice and cellular data usage with the GoPhone SIM (which incidentally is free).

For Straight Talk service, you need to use a Straight Talk SIM.

If my cellular usage patterns change, most likely I will use Straight Talk. But for the time being, I'd rather pay $12 per month for the services that I use, rather than $45 per month for "unlimited" services that I wouldn't be taking advantage of. Even if I had a couple of months with $100 GoPhone usage (e.g., traveling), it's still cheaper than paying $33 a month more for Straight Talk. GoPhone works for my usage pattern which is admittedly different than many others.

I'd probably have to get to $30-35 per month on GoPhone before I start thinking about switching to Straight Talk.

 

[Konrad9]

well what happens when tmobile folds? because they will..especially without the iPhone...I'm sure AT&T would have retained the majority of Tmobile's staff if the merger would have gone through

You have to either be an insanely naive AT&T fanboy or a troll to say that with a straight face.

 

[gkarris]

Actually, anyone can now go buy an unlocked iPhone and insert a T-Mobile SIM into it - it'll work just fine (yes, slower data speeds).

But still, T-Mobile needs to be able to sell subsidized iPhones, but probably can't really afford to do so... Catch 22...

 

[devinci99]

I would switch to T-Mobile if they did allowed an proper unlock after the 2 years.

seriously, why doesn't any US carrier do this? I would even take a lesser subsidy for this.

LAst I check they offer a propery carrier unlock after 2 months of good faith payments...

I got 4 phones unlocked through them from BB curve to Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant. And once unlocked they stay unlocked.

I used them with AT&T and other sims from GSM carriers in other countries.

 

[Michael Scrip]

Too sad. I liked their service but I switched for the same reason when Verizon started the iPhone. T-Mobile had better contract conditions even though their 3G network was a little thin in rural areas.

In the long run, I think we need T-Mobile on the US market as a competitor. Their service was one of the best I've seen so far. I have a Sprint work phone, a Verizon iPhone and my wife has a AT&T iPhone (had U.S. Cellular before - worst of all). So, I have some experience with the other major players. T-Mobile has the best plan for the buck and coverage - in my opinion.

What exactly has T-Mobile done to the other carriers?

T-Mobile is losing customers.... most likely to AT&T and Verizon.

It seems that AT&T and Verizon are better competitors

 

[confucious]

The stunning lack of factual information in this thread is why I have given up.
What is the point of trying to help when people don't want to hear?
A lot of information emanates from this site so I came here - but there is too much cr*p to stay.

Have fun.

 

[PCClone]

It is common knowledge that the AT&T money went to Germany to pay down DT debt. It is not available for their network.

 

[Rot'nApple]

Wait a minute here... Isn't T-Mobile the one said they don't need iPhones couple of months back?

And wasn't it a few years ago that Verizon was touting TV ads with the tagline, "There's a map for that."

Sure they were degenerating ATT's coverage, but also a little poke at Apple's tagline, "There's an App for that."

So your point is?...
/
/
/

 

[Spectrum Abuser]

If T-Mobile were to run a promotional offer when they start rolling out LTE for new contracts AND renewing they would see more of a gain. The problem right now is that many of their promotional offers that you see on T.V are for new subscribers only. This limits the potential.

Say $30 for unlimited LTE with a soft cap of 10GB-15GB and after that you drop back to average 3G data speeds.

 

[Agent-P]

I'm a T-mobile customer. I even just ditched my first generation iPhone (which I got for free for working at Apple) in favor of an HTC MyTouch 4G. Compared to my old iPhone it is much better of course. Compared to my experience with the iPhone 4S there are some things better and some things worse. Overall I say the iPhone 4S is superior.

But beat this. I paid $200 for my phone (including 32 GB SD card). I pay $50 a month for Unlimited Talk, Text, and Web (first 2 GB at high speed). I have yet to come near the 2 GB mark before my data gets throttled. So for 2 years I spend $1,400. I compare an AT&T plan which is the same but 3 GB and then paid for usage over that and I'm at $299 for a 32 GB iPhone and $119 a month for a total of $3,155. Every 2 years I'm can buy something like a 27" iMac with the left over $1,755!

I'd rather have an iPhone than a MyTouch but I'd rather have a MyTouch and a 27" iMac (or grocery money) than just an iPhone.

Only one time in the last 10 plus years was I in a situation where a Verizon customer had coverage and I did not.

I think all carriers should be at the price point T-Mobile is at. People I think you are paying too much for your phone and coverage. No wonder we in america are struggling financially.

I disagree, honestly, my wife has T-Mobile and she often has coverage when my iPhone from AT&T doesn't. T-Mobile also has far fewer dropped calls.

With T-Mobile, we pay about $23 per line per month and that has two lines with unlimited data, text and minutes. The remaining lines do not need data, so they have unlimited text, t-mobile to t-mobile, nights and weekends and 500 anytime minutes per line.

So that is a savings of about $55 per month, per line over what you are paying, so over two years that amounts to $1,320. So even with the $500 subsidy, we will save $820 per line over two years.

This doesn't even count tethering into the mix, as officially, you are supposed to pay a $10 fee per line per month to tether with T-Mobile, but when you call and ask to add it, most of the representatives will give you instructions specific to your phone to get around having to do so instead of adding the feature to your line. From what I have been told, they are encouraged to do this kind of thing to show good customer service.

T-Mobiles rates are indeed sustainable over the long term, the problem might be a short term cash flow problem, but since AT&T had to pay a fair amount of money to pull out of the proposed merger, I think that might even have been solved.

I think the bottom line here though is that T-Mobile (not AT&T) should have been the first carrier to get the iPhone as their customer service is almost as good as Apple's.

This is exactly why I'm sticking with T-Mobile. There' no reason for me to pay that much more a month when T-Mobile gets faster data speeds in my area than my friends with iPhones on AT&T and Verizon. And from my few experiences with their customer service, it has been top notch. I would agree and say it is Apple quality customer service.

T-Mobiles ads where they claim they are the "largest 4G network in America" drive me CRAZY. HSPA+ is not 4G so shut up.

If you want to be that technical, then you should also be noting that no US carrier is actually using real 4G speeds. So they're all lying about that.

One reason I left T-Mo is they did not support iPhone enough.

Really poor support.

Not their fault that they can't fully support the iPhone. The bands are there in the Qualcomm chip, just not activated for reasons unknown to us.

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.

-----------------------------------------------

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.

This is what I feel like happened too. Everyone seemed so sure the merger would go through, that it didn't make sense to support a T-Mobile iPhone when it wouldn't matter after the merger went through. But now that it hasn't gone through, I think we will see an iPhone this year that fully works on T-Mobile.

 

[SockRolid]

Actually, as far as customer service and price, they are #1, give them the iPhone and they will be deadly to all other services out there. (Maybe this is why Apple doesn't want to do so, I don't know).

See? They do try harder!

 

[wovel]

If true then Android truly is iPhone's ugly step sister. But Android activation numbers do not bolster that position so seems to me T-Mob is the ugly step sister of the CellCo world. Their coverage is worse than ATTs and that's saying something.

You are forgetting that Android activations are about as reliable a metric as fairy dust concentration.

 

[powers74]

i before everything

Fixed that for you

 

[wovel]

welcome to 2009, US customers. I've had 50Mb/5Mb service for more than 2 years already.

lol


from wiki:

The world's first publicly available LTE service was opened in the two Scandinavian capitals Stockholm (Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks systems) and Oslo (a Huawei system) on 14 December 2009.

Seriously? It is much easier to deploy LTE service in relatively small markets like Oslo and Stockholm. The problems with deploying LTE always show up in the scaling. Oslo and Stockholm would be like the 35th and 36th largest metro areas in the US. In the case of this statistic we are only looking at the cities themselves. Those are actually quite small. (Both well under 1 million people).

It was less than a year later when LTE was deployed in Boston, a metro area larger than Oslo and Stockholm combined. This was a much more impressive feat. Deploying in Stockholm was only a baby step beyond deploying in the lab.

 

[iPadPublisher]

Who is T-Mobile again??

 

[confucious]

Who is T-Mobile again??

The best carrier in the UK.

 

[SBlue1]

ipones for eveyone!

 

[quickmac]

I've had T-Mobile for close to 9 years and usually never have a problem. Their biggest mistake in my opinion was getting on board with all this Google Android nonsense and being the first to tout an Android phone as their flagship phone.

I went through 3 Android phones before just buying a blackberry off ebay and using it with T-Mobile. In TMo's defense they did try to work with me to exchange or offer a big discount on another Android phone but it was more junk after already having junk.

While other carriers were racking up iPhone sales, T-Mobile was sitting around saying they didn't need the iPhone, they had 4G Android phones that were better. All the while unofficially supporting hacked iPhones on their networks anyways.

T-Mobile USA's parent company no longer even wants them, I may eventually have to move to Sprint.

Android in my opinion stifled innovation on new smartphones. It became all about "good sounding specs" on hardware with a hobbled together OS rather than the phone makers continuing to make their own software for their phones a la Motorola before they went downhill with Android.

Blackberry may be failing but at least they make the phones and the OS. And Apple has proven without a doubt that making the handset AND the OS is the way to go. Now all the other makers have to scramble to get out of the Android mess and rework their old OSes they abandoned for the "next big thing."

The iPhone will come to T-Mobile, there's no reason it won't eventually if the company wants to stay in business.

 

[chagla]

I'm a T-mobile customer. I even just ditched my first generation iPhone (which I got for free for working at Apple) in favor of an HTC MyTouch 4G. Compared to my old iPhone it is much better of course. Compared to my experience with the iPhone 4S there are some things better and some things worse. Overall I say the iPhone 4S is superior.

But beat this. I paid $200 for my phone (including 32 GB SD card). I pay $50 a month for Unlimited Talk, Text, and Web (first 2 GB at high speed). I have yet to come near the 2 GB mark before my data gets throttled. So for 2 years I spend $1,400. I compare an AT&T plan which is the same but 3 GB and then paid for usage over that and I'm at $299 for a 32 GB iPhone and $119 a month for a total of $3,155. Every 2 years I'm can buy something like a 27" iMac with the left over $1,755!

I'd rather have an iPhone than a MyTouch but I'd rather have a MyTouch and a 27" iMac (or grocery money) than just an iPhone.

Only one time in the last 10 plus years was I in a situation where a Verizon customer had coverage and I did not.

I think all carriers should be at the price point T-Mobile is at. People I think you are paying too much for your phone and coverage. No wonder we in America are struggling financially.

Thanks for the explanation. Most consumers in the US do not look at the total cost over two years. They are attracted to the usual $100 to $200 subsidy on a phone but they do not realize that in 2 years they will be paying a lot more. I simply don't understand why the no-contract or prepaid are not so popular. Outside the USA, I would say majority of the world is prepaid.

Phone service rates are extremely cheap, even in 3rd world countries. INCOMING everything is free (calls, sms). Over here, you get charged both ways.

 

[killerboot]

uh...yea, that's the reason.

Tmo should hate the game, not the player.

 

[SAD*FACED*CLOWN]

You have to either be an insanely naive AT&T fanboy or a troll to say that with a straight face.

no, a quick look at my post history would dispel your theory on my OPINION...when Cigular and AT&T merged there weren't that many layoffs...the executives at tmobile might be in jepordy if it would have gone through but the staff at retail locations and customer service would have been retained during the transition...but if you read something other than the funny papers you'd know that