T-Mobile Claims Network Supremacy On Land and In Space

T-Mobile has had a superb 5G network for a few years now but it wasn’t claiming to have the best ...everything else. Now it is, and its satellite partnership with Starlink is now going live, and will soon allow data, something rival NTN services can’t match yet. 

Context 

T-Mobile has been on a long network journey. When former CEO John Legere took over in late 2012, T-Mobile was in dead last place on nearly every metric. The strategy that Legere and his new CMO Mike Sievert came up with was to focus on whatever they could change immediately and aggressively acquire spectrum whenever an opportunity presented itself. They started with process innovation, attacking the terms and conditions in service plans, and marketing themselves as an upstart willing to break the rules. This astutely positioned T-Mobile not as a price leader – competing solely on price means you can’t move upmarket – but as a value leader. 

As spectrum assets became available, T-Mobile pounced. T-Mobile started with a large cache of prime low-band spectrum in 2011 as part of a failed takeover by AT&T. In 2017, T-Mobile bought 600MHz low-band spectrum at auction to fill out its coverage holes. Finally, T-Mobile waited for a better regulatory environment and in 2020 acquired/merged with Sprint and its huge trove of 2.5GHz mid-band spectrum from Sprint’s failed WiMax launch. That enabled T-Mobile to largely sit out the expensive mmWave mania that Verizon bet heavily on. Finally, just as important as the spectrum itself, T-Mobile's technical teams under Neville Ray (and now Ulf Ewaldsson) executed well, building a technically advanced 5G network that maximized its spectrum assets – something cash-starved Sprint had not been able to do. 

We’re the best! (So are we!)

Network operators all claim to be the best in some way. In a press release just this morning about new customer service improvements Verizon says it has “America’s fastest and most reliable 5G network.” Boost Mobile claims it is “rated #1 in 5G coverage and 5G availability in seven major U.S. cities.”* AT&T has backed off network claims, instead talking about its “connectivity leadership as America’s largest and fastest-growing fiber broadband network.” AT&T also guarantees its network, which means proactively providing credits for network outages. T-Mobile has played this game, too. As recently as three months ago, T-Mobile said it had “America’s largest and fastest 5G network.” T-Mobile is now upgrading that claim to “officially the Best Mobile Network in America” thanks to a huge Ookla network test, and (now CEO) Mike Sievert cautions that rivals are basing their claims on small drive testing.  

What’s different this time is that T-Mobile is backing this best mobile network claim with ads featuring Billy Bob Thornton that acknowledge T-Mobile's past, which adds credibility. If customers test T-Mobile's claims, they will find that the current network is genuinely terrific, with fast speeds and coverage in areas T-Mobile previously lacked. Finally, T-Mobile is further expanding its network coverage with ubiquitous satellite service that works in the background, no user action required. 

T-Satellite with Starlink Out of Beta, Free or $10/month even on Other Carriers, Data Coming 

T-Mobile first announced its partnership with Starlink in 2022, and it used a Super Bowl ad earlier this year to kick off a public beta. The service goes live on July 23, and it works with 75% of devices currently being used by T-Mobile subscribers – essentially anything sold in the past four years should be compatible. Apple (via GlobalStar) and Google (Skylo) offer emergency services access via satellite but you need to invoke a process to use it. Both are expanding to full messaging, along with Verizon (Skylo). However, T-Mobile's T-Satellite (Starlink) can be used for regular messaging from the outset, and no user interaction is required to turn the service on or acquire the satellite. From the customer’s perspective, it just works in the background like a terrestrial cell tower, so users can not only send messages while out of cell coverage, they can receive them as well. 

Starlink has a lot of satellites in its constellation with more bandwidth available than other options today. On October 1, T-Satellite will expand to include app-based data. Not all apps will be compatible at first; developers need to use an API which lets the app know how much capacity is available so it doesn’t try to load more than the satellite can handle (I.e., don’t try to load a video interstitial ad). Initial apps will include AccuWeather, AllTrails, Apple iMessage, Google Messages, WhatsApp, and X; more are expected. T-Mobile and Starlink have said that they intend to expand T-Satellite capabilities further in the future, potentially including voice over satellite, streaming audio, and even streaming video. This far outstrips the capacity that GlobalStar or Skylo offer today. AST SpaceMobile is promising full broadband via satellite to cellular devices, and it is partnering with AT&T and Verizon in the U.S. and dozens of network operators globally. However, AST SpaceMobile still needs to get most of its enormous satellites built and into orbit; this requires SpaceX launch capacity and financing. Pricing of the service is also an open question; when I talked to AST SpaceMobile’s CEO he could not comment on how this will work, but he did note that $20/month would be a profitable price point for the company and its carrier partners.  

T-Mobile is pricing T-Satellite aggressively and broadly. Users on T-Mobile's top two plans get it for free. All other T-Mobile subscribers can pay $10/month for T-Satellite as an add-on to whatever plan they are on. T-Mobile is also offering T-Satellite to subscribers at other carriers for $10/month as an eSIM that works alongside their terrestrial coverage. 

Free DoorDash 

T-Mobile also included a cherry on top – or, at least a way to order something with cherries. As part of its loyalty program, T-Mobile is now offering DoorDash DashPass for free, and it is extending the offer not just to its top service tiers, but even to much older plans like T-Mobile One. 

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*Techsponential is working on a report about Boost Mobile’s current status, progress, and challenges.