I hope the rest of you guys got a chance to catch T-Mobile’s press event this afternoon. If not, you certainly missed out
on one hell of a show. T-Mobile’s “bad boy” reputation over this past year is all the hype anyone needs to tune in and have a great time. Of course, this isn’t saying that John Legere wasn’t entertaining as always. The show ended up being two parts disruptive and one part stand up comedy special. All I can say more is that AT&T really must be feeling the burn of this event.
 
Starting from the beginning, there were plenty of rumors circulating the Internet that speculated T-Mobile would be covering the cost of ETFs (early termination fees) from other carriers as part of their Uncarrier 4.0 announcement. The rumors apparently caught AT&T’s attention, as they rolled out their answer for that rumor in the style of an unambitious knee-jerk reaction that ended up hurting customers more than helping in the long-term. T-Mobile’s John Legere was quick to point this out and publish a press release in kind addressing the fact that T-Mobile is obviously getting under their skin in a big way.
 
This whole thing escalated yesterday evening when AT&T threw a party featuring musical artist Macklemore. T-Mobile CEO John Legere showed up to the event intending to watch the show but ended up being escorted from the party by security personnel. This incident went viral within an hour, as it was broadcast all across the Internet. John claims he is a big Macklemore fan, only wanting to see the show, and even had a legitimate press pass straight from Macklemore’s agent to boot. AT&T didn’t realize the media coverage they would generate in favor of T-Mobile at the time and I can’t help but wonder if, in hindsight, they would have done things differently.
 

 
That brings us to today’s T-Mobile CES event. T-Mobile started the show by letting reporters into the event room to hear Macklemore’s album playing over the speakers. Whether John just really likes the guy or if it was another jab at AT&T is anyone’s guess. Either way, it set the stage for quite the entertaining show. When John finally took the stage, he kicked things off by going over the past year of transformation T-Mobile has seen through the Uncarrier program. Last year’s CES conference announced Uncarrier 1.0 which did away with contracts completely followed by Uncarrier 2.0 in July when T-Mobile introduced the JUMP program to upgrade your device once every 6 months. In October, we had the Uncarrier 3.0 announcement of free global roaming in over 100 countries and 200MB of free tablet mobile data for life. Having added 15 Million new subscribers last year, T-Mobile’s voice is not one to be quickly dismissed.
 

The event continued with T-Mobile touting its network as the fastest in the country and they provided numbers to back it up. Neville Ray, head of T-Mobile’s network operations, took the stage and said they first had to do away with the old Root Metrics data, which takes around three months to compile. He said they been using Speedtest.net data, which customers routinely use on their own, so their data is accurate within 24 hours time. A slide on screen showed that T-Mobile’s average data speeds were 17.8Mbps, with AT&T trailing at 14.7Mbps, and Verizon in the rear at 14.3Mbps. John made a joke about Sprint’s part of the slide taking a while to load, just like the network, as the Sprint speed data slid slowly into place, showing off a sad 7.9Mbps speed. John went on to mock AT&T for being late to the party with HD Voice, a service T-Mobile has had for a year now, with supported handsets. AT&T plans to launch the service this year, but has no active handsets which support the feature.

 

 

Neville continued the onslaught by comparing T-Mobile’s new 20 by 20 LTE network against AT&T’s home broadband UVerse Internet service. A video showed a Note 3 on T-Mobile’s 20 by 20 LTE network and one on AT&T’s UVerse WiFi downloading a high-definition video from Shakira’s concert in New York back in November. There was enough time to download the video twice before the phone using UVerse had made it to 65%. Near the end of the video, the camera pulled back to reveal another Note 3 running on AT&T’s LTE network that was barely passing 60% of the download. The best news about it is that current LTE devices from T-Mobile are already compatible with the new 20 by 20 network, so they will simply work as soon as the towers are upgraded to support it.

 

 

The talk then turned to the recent acquisition of Verizon’s 700MHz A Block spectrum. Neville made it clear that T-Mobile
was planning to start putting it to use right away. He said this move is going to allow them to begin building out a larger footprint for their service to reach people in more rural areas where AWS is less than ideal. They recognize that AWS is not the best bit of spectrum to run the network on, but they are adamant about fixing it up to address those customer concerns.
 

John came back on stage and immediately put a smile on everyone’s face with his promise to deliver a Cease & Desist order to AT&T to stop their ads about claiming they have a faster network than T-Mobile. The crowd chuckled at the mention of him possibly bringing a camera along for the adventure.

 

 

Legere finally got to the meat of the event and began talking about ETFs, or early termination fees, from other carriers. His philosophy is that if the customer isn’t happy with their service, they should be able to pack up and leave for a different carrier. He then played a short video showing Tweets and comments from people who wanted to switch from AT&T, Verizon, or Sprint to T-Mobile, but couldn’t due to the ETFs imposed by the other carriers. When the video ended, he announced that T-Mobile would be the one to break their bondage by offering up to $650 per line, up to 5 lines when people switch over to T-Mobile. This includes an ETF payment of up to $350 and a credit when you turn in a qualifying device of up to $300. You can go to T-Mobile’s Trade-In page to see what your device is worth to trade it in. John then confidently mocked AT&T’s notice of paying people to switch from T-Mobile by saying, “If it doesn’t work, these pricks will pay you to switch back!”
 

“If it doesn’t work, these pricks will pay you to switch back!”

 
The event got even more lively when they showed off T-Mobile’s new “Breakup Letter Generator“, which is a Mad-Libs style Facebook app that will generate a “break-up” letter for you based on how you answer a few questions. You can then share the letter on one or more of your social media accounts. I have been a T-Mobile customer myself for about a decade now, but I simply had to give the break-up letter app a try. I’m proud of my work.

 

 

A few more questions dotted the end of the event, with the gang clarifying a few points, such as the fact that individual lines qualify as well as up to 5 family lines. They will pay up to $650 per line. Another question asked about the Softbank/Sprint buyout rumor, which John deflected a bit, but maintained that no matter what, the T-Mobile brand and people are here to stay. Overall, the event seemed to be a huge success, especially seeing as how people are still drooling over it on every social media channel I can see. It doesn’t seem surprising to me in the least, given T-Mobile’s new approach on the cellular industry. John and the gang know how to stir up trouble in a way that gets people talking and keeps them talking about it.
 

I’ve really been enjoying T-Mobile’s moves over the last year. They’ve come a long way from very humble beginnings. They are now in a position to truly make a serious difference in the mobile market with their Uncarrier strategy. T-Mobile’s moves here in the states are looking more and more like a genuine effort to look out for the customer’s best interests, and people really are responding to that. It doesn’t matter if they’re making huge profits on these ideas and programs. They’re giving people an impression that a cellular operator is on their side, which is something no one has done in the US before. Besides, no matter how you feel about T-Mobile now, we can always count on John Legere’s antics to put a smile on our faces.