It’s been an interesting stretch of months for the wireless carriers in the United States, both big and small. A lot of different changes to the way plans are priced, data is handed out, and other little things that have tried to make them look more appealing to consumers across the board.
It’s hard to argue that T-Mobile hasn’t been the crux for these changes. Sure, one could argue that some of these, like plan changes and pricing variations, are just part of the natural course and would have happened anyway, but with T-Mobile’s “Un-carrier” initiatives, even the likes of AT&T and Verizon, two companies big enough that doing “whatever they want” has never been out of the realm of possibility, have had to pay attention and adjust.
Of course, all of the changes are meant to get results, and that means people switching from one carrier to another.
Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Cricket, and any other carrier doesn’t want to lose subscribers, obviously, but even more than that it wants new ones. It wants to post those ridiculously high numbers of people arriving under their umbrella. It wants to keep all of them, sure, but basically as a means to make sure that the other carriers don’t have anything to boast about regarding new subs.
Switching carriers is an interesting topic to me, because I think it’s a hard decision for most people. There’s a lot to consider. You’ve got pricing right there at the start, for instance. How does that other carrier’s monthly pricing, both for services and the phone you want, compare to the carrier you’re using now? And then there’s network coverage: Does that other carrier compare favorably to what you’re already using? Phone selection is pretty equal across the board, so that might be the easiest part to consider these days (which is good!).
A friend of mine just switched from one of the biggest networks to the other biggest network, and so far he’s been pretty happy with the decision. He’s saving a ton of money every month, apparently, and the new carrier even included a free tablet for good measure. But the decision was a tough one, even for him and all the perks he was getting, because he’s been a customer of that other big carrier for so long. He wasn’t particularly a fan of them, but there was still some ingrained loyalty in there that he had to work past before he could ultimately make the switch.
I haven’t switched carriers in years, and while I’d like to switch to the Un-carrier, the network coverage here still isn’t where it needs to be for me to realistically consider it. Honestly, though, I’m not even sure that I’d do it even if the network coverage was better. I haven’t really had any issues with the carrier I use now, and while the Un-carrier is throwing in some ridiculously good perks that I’d actually take advantage of, the decision to switch is still pretty hard.
Now that 2015 is coming to an end, I’m curious to see if any of you have switched carriers this year. If you did make a switch, how many lines did you migrate and what was the reason you made the switch? Which carrier did you switch to? If you didn’t switch in 2015, are you already planning to in 2016?
