T-Mobile said users of the latest smartphones such as Samsung Galaxy S8 can enjoy double speed — up to gigabit-class speeds – on its LTE network.
Yesterday, T-Mobile celebrated Verizon’s loss of 307,000 postpaid customers, a record for Verizon, in Q1 2017 despite reinstating unlimited data plans in February. T-Mobile US will be revealing how many wireless customers it received from Verizon.
US-based analyst firm TBR, in a research note on Thursday, said that Verizon’s weakening postpaid performance indicates the bulk of consumers no longer view the quality and coverage of Verizon’s LTE network as a strong enough differentiator to warrant a premium price tag.
Verizon’s download speed has plummeted 14 percent since they launched unlimited LTE. AT&T’s download speed dropped 4 percent ever since they offered unlimited LTE, said T-Mobile in a statement.
The above information is based on T-Mobile’s analysis of Ookla Speedtest data using download speed from January 1 to February 12 for Verizon (25.49 Mbps) and January 1 to February 15 for AT&T (24.41 Mbps) compared to the week of April 9-15 (21.96 and 23.51 Mbps respectively).
“Watching what the carriers’ new unlimited plans are doing to their networks is like watching a train wreck in slow motion – emphasis on slow,” said John Legere, president and CEO of T-Mobile.
Customers who pick up the latest phones at T-Mobile can save hundreds annually over Verizon and AT&T with T-Mobile ONE.
On T-Mobile plans, if the network becomes congested, top 3 percent of data users (>30 GB/mo.) may notice reduced speeds due to prioritization.
Steve Vachon, analyst at Technology Business Review, said Verizon faces a predicament in 2017 as the carrier will need to discount its unlimited data plans to compete with T-Mobile One and Sprint Unlimited Freedom, but that strategy would diminish ARPU and unlikely generate sufficient subscriber additions to improve service revenue.
Baburajan K
editor@telecomlead.com
