After announcing its full Q4 2018 results earlier today, T-Mobile executives held a conference call to further discuss its results and take questions from analysts. They revealed some new info regarding T-Mo’s upcoming TV service, its home broadband plans, and more in the process.
First up, T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray touched a bit on upcoming 5G handsets, saying that mmWave devices are expected in the first half of the year while devices that also have 600MHz will likely come in the second half of 2019. COO Mike Sievert then touched a bit on T-Mo’s plans for 5G pricing, saying that doesn’t plan to charge more for 5G rate plans, instead hoping to get revenue growth from offerings like enterprise, broadband, and Internet of Things. “But we don’t have plans for the smartphone plans that you see today to charge differently for 5G enablement versus 4G LTE,” said Sievert.
T-Mobile execs also touched on home broadband. Sievert said that T-Mo is planning to run a pilot test of home broadband service using 4G LTE in the first half of 2019 with plans to move to 5G later. The T-Mobile COO added that home broadband is an important piece of its merger with Sprint, saying that New T-Mobile has “very ambitious home broadband plans.”
T-Mobile’s upcoming pay TV service was talked about during the call as well. Sievert said that the TV service was expected to launch in 2018 but is now slated to arrive in the first half of 2019. He added that T-Mo has already launched a predecessor product in four cities using the Layer3 TV brand and that T-Mobile has been gathering feedback from customers about features they’d like to see.
Sievert went on to talk a bit about T-Mobile’s mobile video strategy. T-Mo says that it doesn’t plan to offer another “skinny bundle” of channels, instead feeling like it can fill a “nuanced role” to help customers get access to content and let you put together your own media subscriptions. “We don’t have plans to build an Nth undifferentiated skinny bundle out there. There are plenty of those,” said Sievert. “But we think there’s a more nuanced role for us to play in helping you get access to the great media brands out there that you love and to be able to put together your own media subscription in smaller pieces. $5, $6, $7, $8 at a time. It’s an exciting future for us.”
Source: T-Mobile