T-Mobile's Phone Selection

Aeroplane, welcome to Wireless Advisor and thank you for echoing what I feel as well. It was a few years ago they had only about 10 phones available, now it's at least 30+, which is a good thing, BUT I completely agree with you that their current selection is lousy.

I don't know why they're not getting better phones. I have a hard time believing AT&T has THAT many exclusives...

I think there are many other T-Mobileites out there who agree with us.

 

This is an old saw that keeps being repeated over and over and over and over. Face it, if you want a better selection find another carrier if that's what's important to you. Even AT&T doesn't have everything either. They have maybe one or two Nokia models.

 

i think thats what people do is find another carrier quiet honestly.

 

You go with what's important to you. Some people think that the selection of carrier provided phones is the most important thing while others think that the quality of the service you receive is more important. It does no good for anyone to have a great selection of phones if the service doesn't work for you.

 

I just got a Samsung Katalyst, when I was in the store yesterday they had a fairly wide selection of phones most of them up to date and excellent. The killer for me at the moment is the lack of 3g access here in GA.

On a side note, there are touchsreen pda's that tmobile has currently.

 

this sounds like opinion more than fact. but you are definetly entitled to that.

but i must say that to some people phone selection is important and other companys tend to offer better ones.

In my opinion, trying to imply that TMOB's service is any better quality than any other company is quiet bold. i will say that the service is inexpensive, but then again it is barely nationwide and 2G service only (3G is coming but its about 2 years late).

For me personally i like having a good service and a cool phone. both can be had, depending on your area may depend on what company offers the combo of service and phone selections.

i figured since we are all voicing are opinions id throw my hat in the ring

 

I took a quick glance at T-Mobile's phone selection and you're quite correct, frankly it's pathetic (AT&T's selection is a bit of a poor showing too I have to say, but somewhat better than T-Mobile's). What sticks with me though is the prices they are charging! $50 for a Nokia 5310 on contract! Sweet Moses!

The problem is old boy that much of that nice looking kit won't do you much good on T-Mobile USA. Most 3G handsets are out since they are built for 2100 MHz or 850 MHz networks. Tri/quad-band 2G handsets would be fine of course, but some manufacturers simply concentrate on other markets that they deem more important. Of course one can take some comfort from the fact that even though you can't get them from T-Mobile, you can still get and use such handsets SIM free.

 

I'm not here to make excuses for T-Mobile. It should be noted that the other big players namely AT&T and Verizon have a big advantage over T-Mobile. Not only did they have a thirteen year advantage over T-Mobile, but had no say that they would be relegated to use only 1900 "PCS." They have licenses to serve the majority of the US. However, it's easier said than done to cover "everything." T-Mobile has never had any pretensions that they were as good as the big boys like Verizon and AT&T. That's part of the reason why they try to compete based on other things such as price and level of customer service. Consider that if it had not been for Sprint PCS buying Nextel they would possibly be smaller than T-Mobile. T-Mobile has done quite well for themselves and have added over 10 million subscribers in the last few years. Despite their lackluster offerings of phones they've still managed to do quite well for themselves. As far as 3G you cannot offer what you don't have spectrum for. Verizon and AT&T are awash in spectrum so of course they don't have any problem rolling out 3G. T-Mobile is rolling out 3G only now because those who occupied the spectrum (the government) was in no hurry to vacate the space.

And service both the ability to have a signal and the customer services to service your subscribers is very important to many people.

 

Once again, I completely agree with you.

 

if you sign up with tmobile through an authorized agent you can usually get just about any GSM phone with a subsidy for activation because they all sell for the most part unlocked models. I work for tmobile and agree the phone selection while it's always getting better leaves something to be desired. I do think to with the Nation Wide launch of our 3g network you will see a lot more options coming before the end of the year.

 

Well, as tmobileman says, supposedly T-Mo is going to make a 3G marketing push later this year and release some HSDPA phones. I'll believe it when I see it, but that's the rumor.

That reminds me that bobolito started a thread in the Cingular (now AT&T) forum a while ago where we discussed upcoming phones. I'm not asking him to do this again, but it surprises me that none of the insiders here have advance info on T-Mo phones. Do we even have a list of what they are releasing in July and August?


SW

 

If you are a hater of samsung do not use tmobile. That is alot of their phone selection.

 

currently there are 16 phones offerred through the web site for No Cost just FYI

 

LOL is there such a thing as a lover of samsung?...If so I am sure it is just because these are the free phone users, you know the kind that will take anything as long as it is free.

 

Good one! :lmao:

 

I thought you might like that one Mike, since I know you're such a FAN of samsung. Lol
:cheers:

 

With respect, if they charged for some of those free phones it would be a damned cheek!

 

"With respect" even if they are crappy phones they do have to pay the manufacturer of these phones for them.

 

Yeah I knew Mike was going to like this as well. I am in the same boat as him I just love samsungs ...not. I just think people besides most of us who know better think they are ok because Samsung is a known name. But daily I watch a co worker with a samsung from tmobile and he swears up and down about how much he hates it and it is only 3 weeks old lol.

 

and customers sign a contract and agreement to pay tmobile money for 2 years for a samsung that costs them roughly 75-150$ depending on which free phones we are talking....

its often referred to as subsidizing. trust me Tmobile is not hurting from it and IMO its the customers fault if they fall for a freebie phone that is junk that they dont like.

i personally am a "get what you pay for" kind of guy, i think you can definetly over pay, but things that are "free" generally are not worth having IMO.

 

Are you implying that Samsung is giving away phones? Of course it's costing T-Mobile money. If it's not free the carrier is going to ask you to either pay the unsubsidized cost or take a subsidy and commit to a term if you want them to pay part/all of the cost.

 

I realise that, but other networks around the world can give away very basic phones for free. A Moto V3 on T-Mobile costs almost $30 with a $30/month 2 year contract. By comparison I can get a Nokia 6500 Slide for free on a £15/month (approx $30/month) 18 month contract. Both contracts give 300 minutes (the Three contract gives units, which can be used for either calls or texts). The T-Mobile contract gives unlimited minutes at weekends, whilst the Three contract includes free incoming calls. Incidentally, for £20/month (approx $40/month) I could get a N95 free.

T-Mobile does seem to have good tariffs in terms of allowances, but I still hold to my point; charging anything for such basic handsets really isn't on.

 

Comparing what you get in Europe with what you can get on any operator over here is a fruitless exercise. We all know or should that selection of phones and what's offered for free with a two year commitment is much different than what goes on in Europe. For one thing the manufacturers don't offer as many models over in North America as they do in Europe. For another the mobile business is a lot more cut-throat in Europe than it is in the US. With penetration rates of well over 100% in many European countries the operators have much incentive to offer very attractive rates for phones as well as to offer more for subscribers to choose from. It really does no good to compare what's the "norm" in Europe with what goes on in North America. We are different in other ways as well. By and large Americans on their mobiles talk lots more than Europeans. Europeans text more than we do only because it's more often cheaper to actually call someone rather than spend £.10 to send an SMS.

 

There were some good points made in this thread, like the lack of 3G, phone exclusivity. I do wish there are some higher end phones available besides the BlackBerry and the Sidekick, though. The pricing of the current phones don't seem that abnormal to me. Verizon, for instance, has 3 or 4 free phones and I remember when they offered only one or two free phones. I am curious as to why they don't carry any Sony Ericsson or LG phones... Surely AT&T didn't get exclusivities on all of these phones; besides, T-Mobile carried SE phones a few years back. I would love to use T-Mobile on a contract basis, but the lack of service in my area plus the lack of 3G (Verizon has me spoiled) has me sticking with Big Red for now. At least 3G is being rolled out now for T-Mobile.

 

Do you have any numbers on revenue and cost per user on carriers in UK or Europe? They should have considerably better numbers than in the US. UK has like 8 times the population density (6 excluding Alaska) which means less towers for same POPS. Coverage area is smaller. UK carriers should be spending less on their network, so they can subsidize the handsets. No CDMA competitors splitting phone sales. I think the list goes on, so like Telekom said, its useless to compare phone costs.

 

Of course there is merit to what you say, but I think you might be overstating your case a little, certainly in terms of actual handset pricing. In terms of basic handsets American networks should be giving them away free. I entirely agree that you can't directly compare the different markets on a like for like basis, but very cheap handsets don't cost the networks a huge amount and don't require that large a subsidy in relative terms. T-Mobile USA's selection is a bit poor so they really should be maximising what they do have by giving as much of it as possible away for free.

 

Revenue and cost per user doesn't necessarily have to be better in the UK. For one thing it's an extremely competitive market, arguably the most competitive in Europe, with five national networks, and various MVNOs. Penetration is around 130%. In other words competition is such that the networks really have to work to poach and, arguably more importantly, retain customers. As a result they have to spend a great deal of money to offer incentives to customers e.g. handset subsidies, reduced prices, free gifts, etc.

I was once offered an upgrade deal from O2 that, if I had stayed within my allowance of minutes, would have actually made me money given that they were offering me money and a free phone worth £300 to take it. Presumably they would have been hoping I wouldn't have stuck to my allowance so they could actually make some money out of it! u

Network quality is very important and the networks generally try to make sure they have a good standard of coverage, not least because the government mandates that they must cover a certain proportion of the population within a given timeframe. The networks also share masts to reduce costs.

Handset subsidies don't necessarily come from reduced network spending, but rather from it being the established business model in my opinion. The networks have to offer subsidies simply because that is how it is done here. If they didn't customers would go to the competition. I disagree that it is useless to compare phone costs because I think one can see that T-Mobile USA does offer some subsidy of the handset, but not enough to make it free. It would be different if the business model was entirely different in that no subsidy at all was being offered.