Wow, what a day for T-Mobile, its employees, it’s customers and the promise for its future. Even with the iPhone and Value Plan announcements, there’s still more to cover from todays investor conference:
- Let’s talk LTE for a moment as T-Mobile’s CEO stated that coverage will expand to 100 million LTE pops for the first half of 2013, with the second half of 2013 expanding to 200 million POPs covered. Release 10 LTE (2×10, 2×20) will better performing than all other competitors.
- Looking at the network modernization efforts on the 1900MHz band, T-Mobile is spending $4 billion in 2012, $4.8 billion in 2013 and a total of $6 billion between 2014 and 2015.
- “In total, $10.7 billion in investment will be made over the next 3 years”
- All that leads to 100 million pops on 1900MHz before the end of 2012, which tells us there are plenty of markets left to launch.
- Thus far, T-Mobile’s network modernization project has led to a 30% rise in data traffic, 10% rise in voice traffic, 75% drop in blocked calls and a 35% drop in dropped calls.
- It’s clear that Deutsche Telekom is re-committed to the future of their US branch as Rene Obermann called the US “the most important game-changer for Telekom’s future.” That’s a pretty stark difference from the days of trying to dump the company on AT&T.
When it comes to customer service, T-Mobile’s CEO John Legere didn’t mince any words when it came to what the company had once achieved with numerous JD Power awards and pledged to find that success again. Legere spoke about T-Mobile’s trouble with helping customers due to employees who found themselves with their hands tied and unable to best serve the customer. Accountability has been lost said Legere, but he was forceful in his promise to return the company to customer service glory.
His plans include empowering front-line employees to do the right thing for customers, ensuring consistency of policies, investing in systems for providing superior experiences across all interactions and turning detractors into supports using programs such as “voice of customer.” T-Mobile sounds like a much different company today than it did yesterday and if they can meet the lofty goals they’ve announced, their challenger strategy just might pay off in a big way.
