T-Mobile CEO John Legere announced last week that wireless customers on the company’s Simple Choice plan will be able to call and use data in Canada and Mexico at no extra charge. Credit: T-Mobile USA, Inc.
Once the target of a failed merger with AT&T and in the past consider an also-ran in the mobile phone carrier wars, T-Mobile has had an interesting turnaround in the last few years. In its most recent quarter, the company added 2.1 million customers to bring its customer total to 58.9 million.
Under the banner of the “Uncarrier” movement, T-Mobile has been promoting the end of two-year contracts, buying out customer contracts from other carriers and, last week, announcing that it will no longer recognize the Canadian and Mexico borders when it comes to customers on its Simple Choice plan.
This latest was announced in a video blog with racing-stripe-wearing CEO John Legere as "Mobile Without Borders."
In a phone interview last week, Alisa Arner, area vice president in the south-central region, said the plan benefits Americans who travel to Mexico and Canada and those who make frequent calls to those country. When people travel internationally, she said, mobile carriers “Could jack up your data rates up to 120 times. This was a pain point we were going to go after,” she said.
Arner said that Uncarrier, a campaign that began in 2013 has let to nine straight quarters of consecutive growth and that the company has another big announcement coming this week. She said customer churn has gone down in addition to T-Mobile attracting new customers from other carriers.
Mexico in particular has been a area of big change for the major wireless carriers as they've all introduced cheaper ways to make and receive unlimited calls to the country. T-Mobile's Canada/Mexico plan also includes LTE wireless data service through its partners in those countries.
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