How Government Cell Phone Service Provider Verizon’s Unlimited Plan Affects T-Mobile

T-Mobile is a well-known Government cell phone service provider that has introduced several exceptional mobile and data plans for its customers. Its new unlimited data plan, known as T-Mobile One has made enormous changes in the wireless industry. All major U.S. carriers have responded since the new plan's inception last autumn. Verizon Communications is a reputed cellular phone service provider and was the biggest holdout, however, it has also started offering an unlimited data plan.

The Government cell phone service provider Verizon’s new plan is more expensive than T-Mobile's but, the company is promoting it’s network strength to justify its higher pricing. T-Mobile is immensely targeting Verizon for charging overages. To answer this, Verizon, the Government cell phone service provider, has to ensure utmost network quality.

Recently, at a Deutsche Bank conference, CFO Braxton Carter of the renowned cellular phone service provider T-Mobile, spoke about the impact of Verizon's new plan on the Un-carrier.

According to T-Mobile, there has been a consistent net add in its subscribers against all three major Government cell phone service providers for the last several years. T-Mobile regularly reports its porting ratios, i.e. the number of customers switching to T-Mobile versus those switching from it, with each of the wireless carriers every quarter.

Before Verizon's unlimited plan, T-Mobile's porting ratio with Verizon was the highest ever in the first quarter, i.e. around 3 to 1, as per the report by Carter. After the cellular phone service provider Verizon launched its unlimited offering, "For four days we went slightly negative. You know, in the 0.9. I think one day it was in the 0.8's," Carter said. "On the fifth day, it started getting back up into positive territory."

Porting ratios have improved every week subsequently. In the first week of March, Carter reported porting ratios around 1.5. Last week, it has scaled into the 2-to-1 range. In the first quarter of last year, T-Mobile posted a 1.34 porting ratio with Verizon.

T-Mobile’s actions to keep customers away from Verizon

A prime factor in T-Mobile's capability to augment net subscribers every quarter is its ability to decrease churn, i.e. the percentage of subscribers canceling every month. From 2013 to 2016, it has been observed that the churn fell from 1.69% to 1.30%.

In the previous year, T-Mobile has bagged the top position in the Nielsen Mobile Inisghts' customer satisfaction survey. Therefore, when Verizon introduced its unlimited plan, some of the T-Mobile subscribers were actually looking to switch.

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The main feature for growing customer loyalty is T-Mobile's various Un-carrier initiatives. Now, it is focusing on the pricing. T-Mobile started including taxes and fees in its advertised pricing and is allowing customers to keep their pricing the same for the life of their relationship with the wireless carrier. Several customers are avoiding Verizon as they will be unable to get back to their current T-Mobile plan at their present pricing.

T-Mobile, the popular cellular phone service provider, is giving potential customers all the reasons to switch and lock in its best pricing. It is also running a promotional offer for two unlimited lines for $100 every month after the introduction of Verizon's unlimited plan.

T-Mobile is striving to deliver the best value in wireless, so that customers do not look elsewhere for options.

Sprint Cell Phone Service Subscribers Will Now Be Able to Pay for Napster through Their Sprint Bill

Finally, Sprint INC. comes forward with some kind of good news for its customers. And the good news is for Sprint’s cellular phone service customers using Napster.

What is so special about it?

The company is putting in some efforts to make it easier for its customers to be able to pay for their Napster subscriptions through their Sprint Bills.  In simple words, if you are a customer of both then you will certainly find it easier to pay for both through your Sprint bill.

Any Advantage Associated?

To be honest, there are not many advantages for cellular phone service users- apart from the fact that they will have the luxury of paying the bills of both Sprint and Napster via their single Sprint Bill. Automatic access to Napster or something like that could make this partnership of the two companies meaningful/advantageous to some extent for Sprint customers.

But Why?

As for reason, anyone signing up for Napster gets one month free access to Napster. Besides this, cell phone service customers of prepaid brands of Sprint like BoostMobile and Virgin Mobile are likely to get access to Napster without having to bother about using up their data.

Who Will Get Benefited by This Partnership?

Only Sprint INC. and Napster are going to be benefitted with this deal to some extent. But the lion’s share of benefits will fall in the lap of Napster. As far as benefits for Sprint INC. are concerned, the company is merely going to get some new cell phone service users and nothing else. Apart from this, this deal is not likely to bring anything special to the company.

This Deal Indicates Something Very Special:

This partnership of the two companies is a strategically thought out move that specially indicates the way different companies are attempting to gain new customers for rapid growth. Napster specially depends on such strategically thought out partnerships for growth. 

However, there is something to notice for every customer. Customers will still be able to pay for their Spotify bills via their Sprint cell phone service bills.

What Else?

This is not the end of everything. Sprint is certainly not the first or new partnership of Napster in any way. The company also declared its partnerships with the likes of Even, known for conducting rigorous audio tests for the iOS app of Napster. In addition to that, Lufthansa Systems, an Airline technology provider, is also in line for offering high quality music for every customer aboard Lufthansa Airline’s Flights.

Moral of the Story:

Coming back to the point, this deal is not of much meaning for Sprint customers as they already get the benefit that both Sprint and Napster are talking about. The deal will simply earn Sprint INC. some new customer whereas Napster will have another strong partnership to rely on for further growth. Now it will surely be very interesting to see the impact of this deal or partnership between the two companies on cellular phone service users and the growth of both the company’s themselves.

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T-Mobile and Sprint Collaborate for New Market Growth to Compete Against the Alliance of Verizon Communications and AT&T

It appears as if the news of the tie-up between Verizon Communications and AT&T has reached the doorsteps of T-Mobile and Sprint. Perhaps this is why both of the companies have decided to collaborate and close in on the alliance of Verizon Communications and AT&T. It seems to be a kind of strategic reply to gain a competitive edge in the market. Perhaps the tie-up between Verizon Communication and AT&T, the two best cell phone service providers, has surely shaken both T-Mobile and Sprint to the core.

On the other side, Verizon Communications does seem to be affected by this decision of T-Mobile and Sprint. Accurately conducted surveys do get a lot of attention in the cellular phone service market nationwide.

Let's See What Rootmetrics Has to Say 

Rootmetrics, a pioneer in the field of mobile ranking, recently conducted a survey. And the report brought some amazing findings, mentioned below, to light.

• Verizon Communications managed to top five national categories. The company secured the best provider in overall rankings because of a reliable and lightning fast network and data performance.
• Brilliant performance during the first half of 2016 put AT&T second in the list.
• Sprint got 3rd place in the overall rankings because of outstanding call related performance whereas T-Mobile bagged the same place in the data categories for cell phone services.

These findings are nothing more than a snapshot of the way these cell phone service providers are continuously dedicating time, focus and resources towards expanding and reinforcing their networks for seeking new customers and growth.  

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Statistics Never Lie. They Speak the Truth Loudly.

Let’s take a look at how this is expected to happen.

• Both T-Mobile and Sprint expressed their unhappiness about some of the results yet they remained focused on discussions about their considerable improvement in the market of cellular phone service providers. This improvement of up to 1.24% is believed to be way more than Verizon (0.28%) and Sprint’s (0.18%) collective improvement.
• T-Mobile came out with improved statistics. The T-Mobile think tank focused on marking improvement in other reports whereas it struggled to do the same in Rootmatrics studies conducted for determining the best network.
• T-Mobile single handedly dominated the results among all carriers with the score of 0.58% in the metro area tests. Almost 40 awards in the category of powerful overall services and nearly 17 awards in a prior survey verify this improvement.
• Sprint bagged six awards in six major metropolitan cities. The company repeated the same performance with six more awards in the prior surveys. Most importantly, the company has managed to ring the warning bells for the alliance of AT&T and Verizon Communications with 42 wins in a number of metropolitan areas.
• Verizon Communications managed to sneak in with 0.28% improvement. Moreover, AT&T’s refusal to comment at only 0.18% improvement sums up everything.

This Cat-Fight Is Certainly Getting Very Interesting:

T-Mobile and Sprint are continuously making giant strides towards displacing the two huge cell phone service carriers from the top spot. The main objective of this alliance between T-Mobile and Sprint is particularly to do so in the category of large metropolitan areas. Rootmatrics has confirmed it in its recently published report.

This is enough to prove that the rankings do not have any impact over a company’s market reputation because of their quality services. All in all, T-Mobiles alliance with Sprint indicates cut-throat competition in the market with Verizon Communications and AT&T for new growth and customers.

Verizon Partners With Korea Telecom for 5G

The major US carriers AT&T, Verizon and Sprint have been conducting initial trials to test 5G services for quite some time. Out of all, Verizon took the lead by partnering with Korea Telecom to deliver 5G wireless service. The pair of companies will work to determine the technologies that would be required to establish standards for 5G services.

Tom Wheeler, the chairman of the FCC mentioned in his speech to promote awareness regarding 5G services and its tentative benefits to the country. 5G is said to offer speed which will be ten times than that of 4G.

As per predictions made by other companies, it is said that 5G technology will become available by 2020 but, Verizon and Korea Telecom believe that their collaboration will result in providing 5G services by 2018. Under the deal, both companies will put forth efforts to accelerate commercialization of the improved technology.

Korea Telecom is scheduled to research and develop this technology by the Pyeong Chang Winter Olympics which are going to be held in the South Korean city in 2018. After signing the agreement, Verizon showed Korea Telecom’s chairman its testing location in Basking Ridge, New Jersey. Here, Verizon showed speeds up to 1.8 gigahertz per second by using fixed wireless point to multipoint technology. Big Red has also shown interest in Korea Telecom’s 5G millimeter wave technology. 

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Following the agreement with KT, Verizon announced an alliance with KT, SK Telecom and NTT DoCoMo to develop 5G trial stipulations to serve a platform for radio interface trial activities. The announcement regarding the initiative was made in February and at that time the companies stated that technical trials would begin this year. The companies also signed a deal in an LTE broadcast alliance (LTE-B). It is made to allow various end user devices to share one multimedia stream.

Verizon previously took the lead by being the first US carrier to enter into 4G LTE services. The speed of 5G data is almost 100 times faster than that of 4G LTE. Maintaining the lead, the company seems pretty confident to offer 5G services within the specified time.

Concerns Raised Over Sprint Mobilitie's Small Cell Roll out Efforts

Sprint’s commitment to roll out nearly 70,000 small cells in cities across the country, mainly through Mobilitie, has slightly halted due to issues in obtaining authority for transmitters. Some Wall Street analysts are questioning the large amount of money that the company is writing off from customers who got in contract for the carrier’s handset-leasing offer and later took the devices for no charge.

Regarding the Sprint network, The Wall Street Journal stated that Sprint is trying to deploy small cells, principally for its 2.5 GHz spectrum, on utility poles in "public rights of way," which includes the land that holds city utilities such as street lamps, fire hydrants and several others. Sprint is reported to be working with Mobilitie to install the briefcase-sized antennas on the poles.

But the efforts are temporarily suspended as Sprint awaits zoning approval for some of the small cells. This is also a bit of the reason for lowering the capex guidance for the remaining part of the year to $3 billion, much lower than the expected value of $4.5 billion.

As per the WSJ, Mobilitie currently has 1,000 permits and will start a wide-scale rollout when it has more. Mobilitie's CEO shared that building and operating cost of the small cells is $190,000 over 10 years, which is much less than the average cost to operate a macro tower. Also the filing of permit applications under different names has led to confusion. The company has said that all future applications will be filed under the name Mobilitie.

The analysts at MoffettNathanson observed that the company incurred a $166 million loss that is related to "cell site construction and other network costs that are no longer recoverable as a result of changes in the 

Company's network plans." 

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"Although $166M (out of a ~$3B current capex plan) once again represents a relatively modest amount, and indeed an amount that may have been spent years ago, one wonders if there is the potential for additional capex-related write-offs should Sprint continue to slash prior network commitments," wrote analysts about Sprint's charge.

Analysts also added "Interestingly, Sprint's 10-K discloses that Sprint is now borrowing against future lease receivables, having sold $1.2B in not-yet leased device receivables for cash of $600M in the calendar first quarter. This suggests that Sprint may be running out of runway for additional handset securitizations," "Perhaps this is why T-Mobile, after a brief dalliance, has decided to de-emphasize leasing."