john legere
T-Mobile CEO John Legere in San Francisco yesterday.

T-Mobile’s expanded WiFi calling program, announced by the company yesterday, will help the company’s customers who live in areas or buildings where its cellular coverage isn’t as strong, and it could make people more comfortable switching from rival carriers. The initiative includes a new “Personal CellSpot” WiFi router that prioritizes phone calls.

But what about T-Mobile customers stuck with phones that don’t make calls over WiFi networks?

Actually, they’re not stuck. T-Mobile is opening up its $10/month JUMP (Just Upgrade My Phone) insurance program for a limited time to customers who don’t have JUMP already, to help them make the upgrade to WiFi-enabled phones.

Under normal circumstances, customers who didn’t originally enroll in JUMP would be out of luck. It’s an insurance program, so you usually have to opt for JUMP within 14 days of purchasing a device.

But the one-time late enrollment period means T-Mobile will pay off up to half the remaining balance on an existing device when customers upgrade to a new one, even if they didn’t sign up for JUMP previously. The special enrollment begins on Sept. 17. Going forward, T-Mobile says 100 percent of the phones it sells will be WiFi-enabled.

A new customer’s perspective

IMG_0002
Jumping on board with T-Mobile.

This is now personal for me, too.

I recently switched to T-Mobile from AT&T, after making a deal with T-Mobile CEO John Legere to become a T-Mobile customer if he agreed to speak at our upcoming GeekWire SummitAs Legere told GeekWire reporter Blair Hanley Frank during the company’s press conference yesterday, “The f–cker ran right down the street and signed up, and now I’ve got to speak at your event.”

In all seriousness, I had been planning to make the move for a while, in part to get more hands-on experience with T-Mobile to help inform GeekWire’s coverage of the Bellevue-based wireless company.

Before making the switch, I was reassured by my strong experience with the T-Mobile test-drive program, which let me test out an iPhone on the company’s network for a week. (My colleague Tricia Duryee didn’t have as much luck with her T-Mobile test-drive.)

So far my experience on T-Mobile has been solid, and the perks are hard to beat. I received $80 for trading in my old iPhone 4S, T-Mobile will cover my early termination fees after I get my final bill from AT&T, and I’ve received a year of no-extra-charge unlimited data through its refer-a-friend program. (Thanks to GeekWire reporter Taylor Soper for that!)

I live in an urban area, where T-Mobile’s coverage is strong, although I am concerned about what will happen when I travel to visit family in rural areas. T-Mobile’s coverage isn’t as strong in those cases, and that’s one of the reasons why T-Mobile’s expanded support for WiFi calling — improving coverage by routing calls wirelessly through the Internet — will be compelling for many of its customers.

Apple’s embrace of WiFi calling

iphone 6 screenshot2Apple announced WiFi calling support for the iPhone 6 this week, including a plan to work with T-Mobile for seamless handoff of calls from the cellular network to WiFi. The one downside: Existing versions of the iPhone don’t support WiFi calling, which means that a sizable number of existing T-Mobile customers won’t be able to take advantage of WiFi calling on their current devices.

Given the timing of my switch, I knew that the iPhone 5s I selected would be quickly surpassed by the iPhone 6. That’s one reason I signed up for JUMP when I bought my phone.

If I had been making $10/month JUMP payments for a longer period of time, I probably wouldn’t feel great that people not in the program will suddenly get the same perk I’d been paying for. It will be interesting to see if T-Mobile faces any backlash over that from existing customers.

In the meatime, this f–cker has a decision to make. Because I just signed up for T-Mobile, I would still need to cover hundreds of dollars of the remaining balance on my iPhone 5s if I made the move to the iPhone 6, even through the JUMP program.

So for now, at least, I’m planning to hold off and stick with my current phone.

Stay tuned: I’ll be posting more about my day-to-day T-Mobile experience as I spend more time on the network. And I’m looking forward to a fun conversation with John Legere on Oct. 2.

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to GeekWire's free newsletters to catch every headline

Job Listings on GeekWork

Find more jobs on GeekWork. Employers, post a job here.