T-Mobile is hosting “Un-carrier 7.0” this afternoon in San Francisco, hinting that this time “it’s personal.”
It’s not clear what that means yet, but in general, the Bellevue-based carrier has used these events in the past to introduce new marketing ploys aimed at stealing away customers from the competition. So far, it has worked, with T-Mobile winning millions of new customers over the past year.
Another cryptic message posted to Twitter by CEO John Legere includes a video of a man spray-painting a cloud on a wall, so one wild guess would be that we will could be hearing about a potential cloud service that could store people’s photos or other personal content. [See GeeWire’s liveblog here.]
I’m ready to unveil more of my #uncarrier7 masterpiece. Think you know what it means?! #part4 #todayistheday https://t.co/0Ij8at0uMI
— John Legere (@JohnLegere) September 10, 2014
For example, at previous events, T-Mobile killed off roaming fees, offered to pay customers’ early-termination fees, launched an unlimited music streaming and announced it would give away iPhones for week-long test drives to tempt customers into switching networks.
Today’s event will likely be no different, with the carrier offering a service that other carriers would normally charge for, or wouldn’t be willing to offer at all.
With today’s announcement, T-Mobile is not only distancing itself from the competition, but also physically distancing itself from the other carriers. At 1 p.m., press will gather at a T-Mobile store in San Francisco, hundreds of miles away from Las Vegas, where the rest of the industry is gathering for its annual CTIA wireless conference.
Instead of locating the event in Las Vegas to be central to the wireless press, it’s choosing to piggy-back on Apple’s event yesterday, by hosting the press conference just a day later.
T-Mobile got a rare mention at Apple’s event yesterday when Apple announced that it will be the first carrier in the U.S. to enable phone calls over WiFi when a cellular connection is poor or not available using Voice over LTE (VoLTE).
The partnership represents a huge reversal from where things stood more than a year ago, when T-Mobile was the last of the major carriers to get the iPhone on its network, an announcement that was made at its first Un-Carrier event.
Despite T-Mobile’s success at offering cutting edge technology and consumer friendly plans and prices, there’s still a cloud hanging over its head.
After a failed merger with Sprint, the company is still seeking a potential partner to give it the cash it needs to participate in the upcoming wireless auction. It desperately needs more spectrum if it plans to continue offering fat pipes that allow its customers to gobble data at insane rates.
One plan is for T-Mobile to raise cash on the public markets to purchase spectrum, but the company, which is majority owned by German telecom giant Deutsche Telekom is already weighed down by a lot of debt.
Just yesterday, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler was celebrating that there remains four major wireless carriers in the U.S., so another tie-up with a U.S. carrier seems less likely. Interest remains from a French-based carrier, called Iliad, but it remains to be seen if it can raise enough capital to buy T-Mobile at a price its willing to sell.
This morning, Legere, T-Mobile’s outspoken CEO, was prepping for his afternoon performance, by taking to Twitter to ask whether he should wear black with a magenta T -shirt, or magenta with black T-shirt. He got dozens of responses, mostly voting for magenta.
Tune in later today to see what he decided to wear, and to hear what getting “personal” is all about.
In the meantime, here’s a breakdown of T-Mobile’s Un-Carrier announcements to date:
- UnCarrier 1.0: Killed off the two-year wireless contract; announced it finally was selling the iPhone. (March 2013)
- UnCarrier 2.0: Introduced the ability to upgrade devices twice a year (July 2013).
- UnCarrier 3.0: Eliminated roaming fees (October 2013).
- UnCarrier 4.0: Started offering to pay customers’ early-termination fees (January 2014)
- UnCarrier 5.0 and 6.0: Launched unlimited music streaming and free seven-day “test-drives” with the iPhone 5S. (June 2014)
