United States fourth largest wireless service provider T-Mobile (TMUS, Financial) is all set to wipe out the edge the bigger players have over it. While the data speed offered by T-Mobile in major cities is right up there with AT&T(T, Financial) or Verizon(VZ, Financial), the network doesn’t quite live up to the mark in the lesser or let’s say suburban areas.
The Upgrade
All that criticism that the company has been facing, may soon be a thing of the past as T-Mobile has announced its decision to upgrade its entire 2G / EDGE network to provide faster 4G LTE service. This plan is expected to be implemented by around June 2015.
T-Mobile, it may be recalled had launched its LTE Network at the same time last year. Having reached a penetration of 210 Million customers, this transition may sky rocket T-Mobile into the American household Urban and rural alike!
Not happy with Verizon
The relationship between T-Mobile and Verizon has been rather difficult to understand. On one hand they have finalised a deal through which T-Mobile would get valuable wireless spectrum for $3.3 billion that will improve its dismal coverage in suburban regions of the country. On the other hand, it is at logger heads with Verizon, for its campaign showing the network coverage maps of all major service providers
"I want to decimate that ad campaign from Verizon," says T-Mobile Chief Technology Officer Neville Ray to CNET in an interview Thursday, as the company is questioning the validity of the data, which allegedly misrepresents the facts and figures about the coverage of T-Mobile, as it represents old data.
"Verizon's ink blots massively understate our coverage and don't begin to represent the actual customer experience on T-Mobile's network," said CEO John Legere who promised that he would be answering to AT&T's "fastest network" claims with a cease and desist letter.
The Sprint Story
There have been talks about the possibility of Sprint(S, Financial) acquiring T-Mobile. While even if true, that needs to go through a lot of hurdles like the federal regulators and opposition from both AT&T and Verizon, if it did go through, it would mean its subscriber count would climb to an estimated 100 million, which puts it just shy of AT&T and Verizon. That would surely heat things up in the telecom space!
All I am saying is whatever happens; T-Mobile seems to come out a clear winner. So hold on to your T-Mobile stocks!
