During a keynote speech at the 4G World Trade Show in Chicago, T-Mobile’s CTO told attendees that Hurricane Sandy will force the company to delay some deployments of its HSPA+ technology in the 1900MHz spectrum. Ray did tell those in attendance that the company has completed “95 percent of the refarming of its 1900MHz spectrum for HSPA+, will launch a series of additional markets before years-end.”
“We would have talked more about those markets today, but Hurricane Sandy made it not feasible,” Ray said.
According to the Fierce Wireless report, Ray also showed a video that T-Mobile plans to release to the public next week which intends to “set the record straight” on T-Mobile’s planned deal with MetroPCS. In the video Ray narrates and explains how the deal is a migration of customers, and not a migration of two networks. Ray further explains that MetroPCS customers can migrate onto T-Mobile’s network and since 60% of MetroPCS customers already change phones once per year, T-Mobile estimates they can fully migrate the Metro customer base by 2015.
In addition, T-Mobile plans to improve the “mobile experience” for Metro customers, including those who want LTE devices. The video closes with Ray saying that the two companies are better than one and the deal will improve customer choice.
We do have one question about Ray’s comments and that’s about the 95 percent competition of HSPA+ refarming. How is that 95% being quantified? Is that only in the areas that are dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, nationwide, regionally? I’m not sure we’ll get clarification from Ray, but we’re completely understandable that any work in those areas affected by Hurricane Sandy might see some delays as T-Mobile crews work to restore service first, improve it second.