T-Mobile responds to AT&T’s upcoming 2G shutdown with free service for IoT customers

tmobileinternetofthings

T-Mobile is no stranger to poking fun at the other major U.S. competitors and the moves that they make, and today T-Mo is putting AT&T in its sights.

T-Mobile says that it’s “throwing a lifeline” to AT&T Internet of Things (IoT) customers but offering them free 2G service through the end of 2016. This includes up to 50MB per device per month and free SIM cards.

If you’re an AT&T customer that’s interested in migrating your IoT devices to T-Mobile’s 2G network, you can fill out this form.

AT&T plans on shutting down its 2G network by the end of 2016. T-Mobile plans on keeping its 2G network through 2020, though, a decision that’s been made in part so that IoT customers have time to make the transition to newer networking tech, like LTE.

T-Mobile recently partnered with Sequans Communications S.A. to use LTE Cat 1 technology for machine-to-machine (M2M) and IoT service.

Today’s news is part of what appears to be an IoT push from T-Mobile. We’ve seen a few IoT-centric moves from T-Mo so far this year, including the aforementioned Sequans partnership and an alliance with Novatel Wireless to offer a bundle to get retail connected devices online. While T-Mobile is still working on getting regular consumers to jump to the Un-carrier — John Legere says that T-Mo’s Q3 porting ratios are higher than Q1 and Q2 — a focus on IoT gives T-Mobile another way to grow.

Source: T-Mobile

Tags: , ,