T-Mobile today announced its Q4 2018 earnings, revealing that it added a record 2.4 million customers in the final quarter of 2018 and that it's now got 79.7 million customers in total. During the earnings call that was held to discuss those results, T-Mobile's executives dropped some interesting details on the carrier's future plans.
With 5G coming soon, many consumers are wondering if the carriers will charge more for 5G smartphone plans. T-Mobile won't be doing that, COO Mike Sievert confirmed today, saying that instead T-Mobile will turn to broadband, enterprise, and IoT to grow revenue. "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.
Speaking of broadband, Sievert also revealed that T-Mobile plans to run a home broadband pilot in the first half of 2019. That pilot will use 4G LTE and will later move to 5G. Home broadband is an especially important part of T-Mobile's merger plans with Sprint, with Sievert saying that the combined company would have "very ambitious home broadband plans."
T-Mobile also touched on its upcoming pay TV service. Originally slated to launch in 2018, T-Mo's TV service is now expected to arrive in the first half of 2019. Sievert said that T-Mobile has been running the predecessor product in four cities, taking feedback from customers and working to further develop its pay TV service before fully launching it to the public.
That pay TV service is just one aspect of T-Mobile's video plans. The other is a mobile video service, and T-Mo says that it's going to do something different than an "undifferentiated skinny bundle". Instead, T-Mobile wants to take a "nuanced role" in helping you to get to the media brands you want and helping you to put together your own media subscription in smaller pieces.
It's clear that T-Mobile's got some big plans for 2019, expanding into the home broadband and pay TV streaming markets. We'll have to wait and see how those efforts work out for the Un-carrier, but for now, at least its customers can take solace in the fact that when they decide to make the jump to 5G, they won't have to pay extra for the service.