T-Mobile and MetroPCS to Merge

Wall Street Journal ^ | 10/3/2012 | ANTON TROIANOVSKI AND ARCHIBALD PREUSCHAT

[Heavyrunner]

T-Mobile USA will merge with smaller rival MetroPCS Communications Inc., a deal that would give the fourth-largest U.S. wireless carrier more scale as it tries to compete with the industry's leaders.

[Heavyrunner]

Interesting...This marks Deutche Telekom's most recent effort to exit the US market, T-Mobile becomes publically traded, final company remains "T-Mobile" headquartered in Bellevue WA.

[prisoner6]

My family has had a great relationship with T-Mobile. Wwe have been on several plans over decades. Right now we have 3 unlimited everything phones...one windows, two android. All work great and the coverage and speed is excellent.

All that said my personal phone is a tracfone prepaid.

Figure $60/month on our unlimited 3-line family plan on T-Mobile and the wife and kids use it, apps and all, so it’s worth it.

For me I spend an average of $10 a month on trac and I can make and receive all the calls I need.

All I need is a phone! Don’t care about the apps.

[wolfman23601]

Does anyone have T-Mobile? I am thinking of switching in January when my Verizon contract runs out since they won’t let me upgrade and keep my unlimited data. I don’t have wifi and I stream a lot of netflix and HBO to my TV. Plus, what is the point of 4g if you can’t use it? On top of that T-Mobile has the Galaxy SIII, which is what I want. How is their customer service?

[Hugin]

I’ve used Metro for a few years now and been very happy. 40 bucks a month for unlimited voice, text and slow internet. Internet is slow, but I don’t use it much anyway. I was paying twice that from Sprint without internet, and limited minutes.

I don’t think this will be good.

[Domandred]

I’m on T-Mobile’s network through another company. Pretty happy with it except the phone I have is an ex-att that’s cracked and broken. I’ll get a new phone soon I suppose.

Not to solicit but check out Solavei real quick. They just company launched on Sept 21. Hit my profile and click the solavei logo for info.

[Grams A]

I have had T-Mobile for a gazillion years and have always been very happy with them. Never had a problem that needed resolution by service in all that time. My old Blackberry died last month and I looked at other plans when I had to get a new phone but decided to stay with TM because of the cost. I’m not tied to the hip with my cell phone though - as a matter of fact I find a cell phones in general rather intrusive - only use it for personal calls, some texting to family and as an alarm clock.

You are obviously looking for a company that will be a more dominant part of your life. So all I can attest to is their reliability which for me has been great for the services I need at a cost I can afford.

[Heavyrunner]

I think it will be good. I’m one of the architecture engineers for T-Mobile, and have a lot of visibility into the technical aspects that drive business decisions like this.

The primary driver here was DT getting out of the US market, but they did so in a graceful manner. T-Mobile will continue to position itself as the value alternative to Verizon and AT&T, as it moves into LTE and full iPhone compatibility.

We’ll never sell the iPhone directly, but we’ll make it so the thing runs better on our network than anyone else’s.

The secondary driver (almost as important) was RF spectrum acquisition. The additional spectrum means MetroPCS and T-Mobile will both eventually have much better coverage footprints, building penetration, and quality of service.

[Getsmart64]

I don't think T-Mobile offers unlimited data to new customers. I added my daughter to my account and she had a variant of unlimited. 4G service up to 5GB and then throttled for the rest of the billing period. I've had them for 3 years now and they used to have GREAT customer service. Lately, it seems I'm not getting someone whom has English as a first language. I had them password my account since I have 4 users on the account and they would never ask me for the password when contacting them. Their customer service is starting to lag.

[catnipman]

We use T-Mobile prepay service. Customer service has been good for me. At a local T-Mobile store, they helped me change numbers when my old number kept getting 000-000-0000 calls. They helped me transfer my pre-pay account minutes to the new account and preserve my “gold” status, so any unused minutes would roll to the next year. Very helpful, friendly and knowledgeable people for the most part.

I’ve used Sprint and been chased by AT&T as I kept leaving them and they kept buying the company I fled too. Hated both.

Prepay is vastly cheaper than any monthly plan if all you need is a communications tether to stay in touch when you’re mobile and don’t plan on yakking half your life away on a cell phone or surfing the web on a credit-card-sized screen.