T-Mobile’s Chief Executive Officer is on the hot-seat for the folks at the New York Times answering some hard hitting questions about AT&T, T-Mobile USA and the future. T-Mobile CEO Philip Humm insists that T-Mobile will keep the value plans that exchange a lower monthly fee for selling you an unsubsidized device. While many of you have yet to see the benefit of this type of rate plan, given what Verizon is incurring Verizon’s and it profit margins because of the huge subsidy on the iPhone 4S, these plans are beneficial to both the company and the consumer. On the subject of data plans, Humm stated that T-Mobile has no intention of introducing shared data plans ala Verizon and AT&T who have stated plans to do so.
You can read the whole Q&A at the New York Times.
In response to the question regarding another acquisition for T-Mobile, Humm respond by stating that he doesn’t see that in the future:
As you’ve seen, there is no possibility for a second AT&T deal in the U.S. market, so I think that answers the question on its own. Deutsche Telekom understands that the best thing that it can do is strengthen the value of its U.S. business. D.T. will look at ways to do that and find financing possibilities to overcome its own financial limitations in the European and U.S. market. There is a vital interest in the U.S. business.
Regarding T-Mobile and the possibility of selling the iPhone:
First, T-Mobile has AWS as a band, globally speaking a very specific band. In the past we were not on the chipset for the iPhone. But chipsets are evolving so they can carry more bands, and AWS is becoming more mainstream with the advancement of LTE devices. We expect that over time, the band will be less of an issue.
That being said, whether we do or don’t get the iPhone is probably a question to address to Apple.
Will T-Mobile rollout an LTE deployment strategy in the near future:
In my personal opinion, the LTE topic right now is in the U.S. completely overhyped. If you look at it from a consumer point of view, do you think there’s going to be a difference between if you’re on 4G or LTE? The point I’m simply making is that from a consumer point of view, LTE is irrelevant at this point in time. It’s not something that’s immediate in its need, and that’s why we’re a little bit relaxed on the LTE front. But we’ll have more to say about LTE when the time has arrived for it. More to come.
What’s in store for T-Mobile in 2012:
We really have established ourselves as a value player in the market. Second, we have a very strong 4G device family, which we’ll continue to evolve. We’ll announce the Samsung Blaze, and soon the Lumia 710. There will be more devices coming up. I think the important thing for us is to bring 4G to the customer.
T-Mobile does more than it is credited for, like we have very strong 4G services. … Our TV usage is growing more than 700 percent. We have a fantastic photo album service, which is completely backed up in the cloud, and completely backed-up address books. There are many things we offer to our customer, and we now need to make sure this is being understood. Then 4G really comes to life. 4G is not just about communication or browsing the Web, it’s much more than that.