7 ms·

Legere repackaged contracts slightly and sold it as snake oil. For the vast majority of customers, their contracts had the exact same impact. A two-year payment

Legere repackaged contracts slightly and sold it as snake oil. For the vast majority of customers, their contracts had the exact same impact. A two-year payment plan (which is, you guessed it, a "contract") on the phone which "immediately becomes due" if you cancel your plan is identical to the early termination fee that had previously been offered by everyone else, just in a slightly less bundled fashion. If, like most people, you were buying a phone from your carrier, the cost at early termination was near identical. Verizon's ETF already reduced each month left on your phone's upgrade period, just like a phone payment plan would have. Legere's a Jobsian marketing genius, but only because he managed to sell people the status quo as something new.

LeoPanthera 7y ago
I don’t buy this. Unlimited data, free international roaming (with data!), and you can bring your own phone to any plan. T-Mobile was very different and I hope it stays that way.
- bogomipz 7y ago
  >"Unlimited data, free international roaming (with data!), and you can bring your own phone to any plan." A couple of years ago an American company I worked for had T-mobile phones with a plan that included the free international roaming. This international roaming was 2G data by default. In many countries we had to visit these data plans for internet access were simply unusable because they were so slow. Opening pages a browser would simply time out. This would happen in large countries China, Australia and many European countries as well. The company ended up ditching T-Mobile as a result. While it was free in the sense that it allowed them to advertise it as such it was not functional.
  - forrestthewoods 7y ago
    I’ve travelled extensively T-Mobile free international data and it’s AMAZING. Europe, South America, and Africa. Yes it’s slow. No I wouldn’t do business with it. But holy shit the difference in “slow data” and “no data” is approximately infinite.
    - bogomipz 7y ago
      Yes and in China, most of South East Asia, all of Australia, all of India and nearly all the Middle East its NOT AMAZING as its completely unusable. It's also NOT AMAZING in many counties in Europe, such as Switzerland, Spain, Portugal and the Czech Republic from personal experience. Ditto for Urugay, Brazil and Bolivia in South America. So no you can't really just call out all of Europe and Africa and South America and say it's amazing. When the alternative is to simply pop a local SIM into your phone and get working internet for the same $15 dollars it costs for the T-Mobile One World Plan what's the point exactly?
      - walterbell 7y ago
        Pop local SIM: - without data, find open store - wait in line for counter service - choose prepaid package/carrier - passport copy/screen: gov + random store - store "forgets" to return passport - run out of data due to opaque billing - repeat
        bogomipz 7y ago
        "waiting in line", "Choose a carrier" and "store forgets to return passport"? You might as well add "having to breathe" and "tapping your debit card" to this list of hardhsips. This list is really quite laughable. In many parts of the world you can get a SIM at a 24 hour convenience store and without a passport. And once you have the SIM you can almost always top them up on line. I think most people would consider the 5 minute time investment to be a fair tradeoff for working internet on their phone.
        walterbell 7y ago
        Countries vary. Travelers buy SIMs when it's easy (e.g. EU). Some countries have more regulation, surveillance, billing or account provisioning glitches.
        jessaustin 7y ago
        IME they sell SIMs from a kiosk in the lobby of the airport. The guy can't go anywhere with your passport because there's nowhere to go. If he screws around just complain loudly; one of the military dudes with big guns will probably respond. b^)
  - myrandomcomment 7y ago
    So I use this everywhere in the world pretty much for years. It is very slow for web, but for just getting email and directions it worked great. If I needed faster I would just get a local SIM and stick it into an WifiAP that I have. You could also upgrade to LTE for your trip for a set fee by pressing on a link in the text msg they (t-mobile) sent you when you turned on the phone in the other country. For me not having to worry about my phone just working (even if it was slow) when I landed is a plus.
  - bogomipz 7y ago
    And and just be clear on what 2G speeds are on the T-Mobile plan with included "international data" its 128 Kbps! [1][2]. Try to open an email attachment or render a tile in mapping app with that. It's a non-starter. It's quite amusing to me that sharing my experience with a specific carrier's international roaming plan would upset someone. Are people actually T-Mobile fan boys? I mean it's a telecom company for heaven's sake. Telecom is one of the sleaziest industries there is. Who cares?! They're all different degrees of shit. For a little context during a 3 years period I was spending a little over 200 days a year on the road internationally with a work issued T-Mobile phone during that time. My experience is not unique either. You can check https://community.t-mobile.com/ https://community.t-mobile.com/ [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/geoffreymorrison/2018/02/07/how-fast-are-t-mobiles-international-data-speeds/#cc93216bdca3 https://www.forbes.com/sites/geoffreymorrison/2018/02/07/how... [2] https://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/roaming https://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/roaming
- BoorishBears 7y ago
  Eh, for the longest time their "unlimited data" was a sham. I was paying something like $50 for 2GB of high speed data, and "unlimited" data. Except after the 2GB it was literally unusable, no matter the time of day or location. Even plain email would stop working, and webpages would never load. A lot of unlimited plans will deprioritze you (slowing you down) after a limit, but usually that limit is higher, and even when you are deprioritized, it still remains useful most of the time. - You can downvote all you want, they were running this scam well after the era of per MB overage fees. In fact they’re still running this scam if you don’t manual switch to their more expensive “One” plan.
  - Someone1234 7y ago
    Considering that before this egregious overage charges were the norm, that's a huge improvement. I'll acknowledge they market it a little misleadingly. But I'm a big fan of anything that removes bill-shock which was a fairly normal problem before T-Mobile got into the market (both for local data overages and international data usage).
    - BoorishBears 7y ago
      When I switched to them the alternative I had been using was not egregious overages, it was a hard cap with slightly more data. I actually should have switched back but didn’t feel it was worth it the effort at the time. Last month I cancelled and switched to Visible, which is an MVNO with unlimited data for 25$, there are similarly competitive networks out there now
      - slivanes 7y ago
        For one line, Visible is $25 only for first month, $40 all other months.
        BoorishBears 7y ago
        Go and read the copy again: https://www.visible.com/party-pay https://www.visible.com/party-pay > Yes, Party Pay is available to all active Visible members. Real (or chosen) families, roommates, frenemies, or total strangers just looking for some sweet savings. I didn't have to look for 4 people, their subreddit has hundreds of links you can join for 4 people.
gowld 7y ago
T-mobile supports unlocked phones. Asking people to pay for the phone they choose is not a termination fee. They get to keep the phone.
- ocdtrekkie 7y ago
  This is not different than Verizon, and never was. (It was hard to get a phone that supported Verizon from anywhere else due to band differences largely, but if you had an unlocked phone that could run Verizon's network, they were and still are legally obligated to activate it.) T-Mobile just claimed their payment plan, which shafted you if you canceled service, wasn't an ETF (it is), and Verizon just said their early termination fee was part of the plan, though it was really paying off the rest of the phone (which it did). In both cases, you're paying off a phone you bought, and keeping it after ending service. The only real difference was that in the past, you were "paying for the phone" on Verizon monthly even if you didn't actually upgrade/buy a phone from them. But since the vast majority of people buy phones from their carrier, it really impacted the bottom line very, very little. The HN crowd over-represents in the tiny group of people that would bring an outside phone to their carrier. A change which materially impacts less than 5% of your customers isn't game-changing, but T-Mobile marketed it like it was important to 100% of their customers.
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    Verizon and Sprint didn't even have SIM cards for the longest time, so a Verizon phone and Sprint phone were always restricted to their networks. As an international traveler, I've never even considered Verizon or Sprint as I would never be able to pop another SIM from a different country.
    - ocdtrekkie 7y ago
      Verizon and Sprint were primarily built on CDMA networks, which generally didn't use SIM cards. They wouldn't work internationally largely because they were incompatible radios. The phones have the unique identifiers hardcoded into the phones, but could be added to a compatible carrier's network. (Bear in mind, a SIM is really just a hardware manifestation of a unique identifier and some settings. It's not impossible to do these things entirely digitally, and now with eSIM, that is happening on GSM/LTE networks as well.)
8ytecoder 7y ago
T-Mobile spun out the phone+plan bundle. This is a good thing for customers. People like me who didn't need a phone still had to pay the built-in premium with plans and contracts. T-Mobile also got rid of contracts. They provide promos to get the same discount that contracts provided but it's opt-in.
nathas 7y ago
> "If, like most people, you were buying a phone from your carrier" Most people bought a phone from their carrier because it was so heavily subsidized and the plans were so expensive. If you broke your phone, you were out a huge amount of money, AND you had an expensive plan to boot. T-Mobile did the right thing and gave consumers an option.
to11mtm 7y ago
No, it wasn't. I'll give you a very real life example. In 2015 my girlfriend needed to go on a long road trip. But her iPhone was dead toast. Soooo we go to the Verizon store. The cheapest options were either to buy a 200$ 'flip' phone (not smartphone, just a flip phone) up front, or to get a new contract and lock in. Mind you, By this time in 2015 it was very easy to find sub-75$ prepaid Android phones. In Brick and mortar stores. Hell Verizon even sold a couple, but you weren't allowed to bring them onto a postpaid plan (lol). I wound up spending less than 100$ on a Lumia 521 (yeah, lol winphone, but the map app (HERE drive) had great offline map downloading support which suited her purpose,) and putting her on my TMO for a while. If you looked at the top end of the market back then, yeah, there wasn't much real difference between what TMO did and a normal contract. But at the lower end of the market it made a huge difference, that's why TMO won so much of that market.

LeoPanthera 7y ago

I don’t buy this. Unlimited data, free international roaming (with data!), and you can bring your own phone to any plan. T-Mobile was very different and I hope it stays that way.

bogomipz 7y ago
>"Unlimited data, free international roaming (with data!), and you can bring your own phone to any plan." A couple of years ago an American company I worked for had T-mobile phones with a plan that included the free international roaming. This international roaming was 2G data by default. In many countries we had to visit these data plans for internet access were simply unusable because they were so slow. Opening pages a browser would simply time out. This would happen in large countries China, Australia and many European countries as well. The company ended up ditching T-Mobile as a result. While it was free in the sense that it allowed them to advertise it as such it was not functional.
- forrestthewoods 7y ago
  I’ve travelled extensively T-Mobile free international data and it’s AMAZING. Europe, South America, and Africa. Yes it’s slow. No I wouldn’t do business with it. But holy shit the difference in “slow data” and “no data” is approximately infinite.
  - bogomipz 7y ago
    Yes and in China, most of South East Asia, all of Australia, all of India and nearly all the Middle East its NOT AMAZING as its completely unusable. It's also NOT AMAZING in many counties in Europe, such as Switzerland, Spain, Portugal and the Czech Republic from personal experience. Ditto for Urugay, Brazil and Bolivia in South America. So no you can't really just call out all of Europe and Africa and South America and say it's amazing. When the alternative is to simply pop a local SIM into your phone and get working internet for the same $15 dollars it costs for the T-Mobile One World Plan what's the point exactly?
    - walterbell 7y ago
      Pop local SIM: - without data, find open store - wait in line for counter service - choose prepaid package/carrier - passport copy/screen: gov + random store - store "forgets" to return passport - run out of data due to opaque billing - repeat
      - bogomipz 7y ago
        "waiting in line", "Choose a carrier" and "store forgets to return passport"? You might as well add "having to breathe" and "tapping your debit card" to this list of hardhsips. This list is really quite laughable. In many parts of the world you can get a SIM at a 24 hour convenience store and without a passport. And once you have the SIM you can almost always top them up on line. I think most people would consider the 5 minute time investment to be a fair tradeoff for working internet on their phone.
        walterbell 7y ago
        Countries vary. Travelers buy SIMs when it's easy (e.g. EU). Some countries have more regulation, surveillance, billing or account provisioning glitches.
      - jessaustin 7y ago
        IME they sell SIMs from a kiosk in the lobby of the airport. The guy can't go anywhere with your passport because there's nowhere to go. If he screws around just complain loudly; one of the military dudes with big guns will probably respond. b^)
- myrandomcomment 7y ago
  So I use this everywhere in the world pretty much for years. It is very slow for web, but for just getting email and directions it worked great. If I needed faster I would just get a local SIM and stick it into an WifiAP that I have. You could also upgrade to LTE for your trip for a set fee by pressing on a link in the text msg they (t-mobile) sent you when you turned on the phone in the other country. For me not having to worry about my phone just working (even if it was slow) when I landed is a plus.
- bogomipz 7y ago
  And and just be clear on what 2G speeds are on the T-Mobile plan with included "international data" its 128 Kbps! [1][2]. Try to open an email attachment or render a tile in mapping app with that. It's a non-starter. It's quite amusing to me that sharing my experience with a specific carrier's international roaming plan would upset someone. Are people actually T-Mobile fan boys? I mean it's a telecom company for heaven's sake. Telecom is one of the sleaziest industries there is. Who cares?! They're all different degrees of shit. For a little context during a 3 years period I was spending a little over 200 days a year on the road internationally with a work issued T-Mobile phone during that time. My experience is not unique either. You can check https://community.t-mobile.com/ https://community.t-mobile.com/ [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/geoffreymorrison/2018/02/07/how-fast-are-t-mobiles-international-data-speeds/#cc93216bdca3 https://www.forbes.com/sites/geoffreymorrison/2018/02/07/how... [2] https://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/roaming https://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/roaming
BoorishBears 7y ago
Eh, for the longest time their "unlimited data" was a sham. I was paying something like $50 for 2GB of high speed data, and "unlimited" data. Except after the 2GB it was literally unusable, no matter the time of day or location. Even plain email would stop working, and webpages would never load. A lot of unlimited plans will deprioritze you (slowing you down) after a limit, but usually that limit is higher, and even when you are deprioritized, it still remains useful most of the time. - You can downvote all you want, they were running this scam well after the era of per MB overage fees. In fact they’re still running this scam if you don’t manual switch to their more expensive “One” plan.
- Someone1234 7y ago
  Considering that before this egregious overage charges were the norm, that's a huge improvement. I'll acknowledge they market it a little misleadingly. But I'm a big fan of anything that removes bill-shock which was a fairly normal problem before T-Mobile got into the market (both for local data overages and international data usage).
  - BoorishBears 7y ago
    When I switched to them the alternative I had been using was not egregious overages, it was a hard cap with slightly more data. I actually should have switched back but didn’t feel it was worth it the effort at the time. Last month I cancelled and switched to Visible, which is an MVNO with unlimited data for 25$, there are similarly competitive networks out there now
    - slivanes 7y ago
      For one line, Visible is $25 only for first month, $40 all other months.
      - BoorishBears 7y ago
        Go and read the copy again: https://www.visible.com/party-pay https://www.visible.com/party-pay > Yes, Party Pay is available to all active Visible members. Real (or chosen) families, roommates, frenemies, or total strangers just looking for some sweet savings. I didn't have to look for 4 people, their subreddit has hundreds of links you can join for 4 people.

gowld 7y ago

T-mobile supports unlocked phones. Asking people to pay for the phone they choose is not a termination fee. They get to keep the phone.

ocdtrekkie 7y ago
This is not different than Verizon, and never was. (It was hard to get a phone that supported Verizon from anywhere else due to band differences largely, but if you had an unlocked phone that could run Verizon's network, they were and still are legally obligated to activate it.) T-Mobile just claimed their payment plan, which shafted you if you canceled service, wasn't an ETF (it is), and Verizon just said their early termination fee was part of the plan, though it was really paying off the rest of the phone (which it did). In both cases, you're paying off a phone you bought, and keeping it after ending service. The only real difference was that in the past, you were "paying for the phone" on Verizon monthly even if you didn't actually upgrade/buy a phone from them. But since the vast majority of people buy phones from their carrier, it really impacted the bottom line very, very little. The HN crowd over-represents in the tiny group of people that would bring an outside phone to their carrier. A change which materially impacts less than 5% of your customers isn't game-changing, but T-Mobile marketed it like it was important to 100% of their customers.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  Verizon and Sprint didn't even have SIM cards for the longest time, so a Verizon phone and Sprint phone were always restricted to their networks. As an international traveler, I've never even considered Verizon or Sprint as I would never be able to pop another SIM from a different country.
  - ocdtrekkie 7y ago
    Verizon and Sprint were primarily built on CDMA networks, which generally didn't use SIM cards. They wouldn't work internationally largely because they were incompatible radios. The phones have the unique identifiers hardcoded into the phones, but could be added to a compatible carrier's network. (Bear in mind, a SIM is really just a hardware manifestation of a unique identifier and some settings. It's not impossible to do these things entirely digitally, and now with eSIM, that is happening on GSM/LTE networks as well.)

8ytecoder 7y ago

T-Mobile spun out the phone+plan bundle. This is a good thing for customers. People like me who didn't need a phone still had to pay the built-in premium with plans and contracts. T-Mobile also got rid of contracts. They provide promos to get the same discount that contracts provided but it's opt-in.

nathas 7y ago

> "If, like most people, you were buying a phone from your carrier" Most people bought a phone from their carrier because it was so heavily subsidized and the plans were so expensive. If you broke your phone, you were out a huge amount of money, AND you had an expensive plan to boot. T-Mobile did the right thing and gave consumers an option.

to11mtm 7y ago

No, it wasn't. I'll give you a very real life example. In 2015 my girlfriend needed to go on a long road trip. But her iPhone was dead toast. Soooo we go to the Verizon store. The cheapest options were either to buy a 200$ 'flip' phone (not smartphone, just a flip phone) up front, or to get a new contract and lock in. Mind you, By this time in 2015 it was very easy to find sub-75$ prepaid Android phones. In Brick and mortar stores. Hell Verizon even sold a couple, but you weren't allowed to bring them onto a postpaid plan (lol). I wound up spending less than 100$ on a Lumia 521 (yeah, lol winphone, but the map app (HERE drive) had great offline map downloading support which suited her purpose,) and putting her on my TMO for a while. If you looked at the top end of the market back then, yeah, there wasn't much real difference between what TMO did and a normal contract. But at the lower end of the market it made a huge difference, that's why TMO won so much of that market.