T-Mobile US (NYSE:TMUS) CEO John Legere has a holiday surprise: the carrier's latest "uncarrier" move. The wily and voluble CEO will unveil T-Mobile's "uncarrier 8.0" at an event tomorrow morning in an interview with David Pogue of Yahoo! News.
The carrier will webcast the event and is inviting questions through Twitter via Legere's @JohnLegere handle and Pogue's @Pogue as well as the #Uncarrier8 hashtag.
It's unclear what the event will reveal, but given that it is taking place in the homestretch of the holiday shopping season it could be related to gifts or devices. However, T-Mobile executives have said that all of the company's "uncarrier" moves are permanent changes to its pricing or offerings, so whatever the announcement is it will last into next year and beyond.
Meanwhile, T-Mobile announced that it had launched what it calls "Wideband" LTE service in the New York City metro area, fulfilling the company's goal of deploying faster speeds in least 26 major markets by year-end. T-Mobile's "Wideband" moniker indicates deployments of at least 15x15 MHz spectrum channels for LTE service; wider channels generally produce faster speeds.
In addition to Manhattan, T-Mobile said its Wideband LTE service now covers customers in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Long Island and northern New Jersey. The carrier said it will "soon" expand the service to all of Westchester County, including White Plains and Scarsdale, as well as central New Jersey.
T-Mobile's Wideband LTE is available in 27 major markets, and T-Mobile has promised more will follow in 2015. T-Mobile has been able to deploy wider channels because it has been refarming spectrum it acquired when it merged with MetroPCS.
Last week at an investor conference, T-Mobile CFO Braxton Carter said T-Mobile now has moved 84 percent of its legacy CDMA MetroPCS customers onto its GSM-based network (up from 78 percent at the end of the third quarter), and T-Mobile has refarmed 63 percent of MetroPCS' AWS and PCS spectrum. Over the next few years, Carter said T-Mobile's goal is to deploy 20x20 MHz LTE channels in 90 percent of its markets.
For more:
- see this Yahoo News article
- see this SlashGear article
- see this T-Mobile release
- see this TMoNews article
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