Deutsche Telekom Looking For a 'Partner' For T-Mobile

I bought the ZTE ZMAX from Walmart at retail for $179 after 10% employer discount because it would have cost me $252 to by directly from a T-Mobile store. That is a lot of money for me because I only work part time at Walmart. If T-Mobile scatters to the winds I'm going to be very pissed off big time. Why would Deutsche Telekom want to sell off T-Mobile when there the fastest growing carrier in the country. T-Mobile even surpassed Sprint becoming the Number #1 Spot in prepaid wireless paid customers over Sprint. T-Mobile please don't go the way of the dinosaur because you offer better cellular service over everyone else.

Cheaper, absolutely.
Faster, yes in many of their LTE areas.
Better customer service? Quite possibly.

But better cellular service? Ha! Don't make me laugh. Being King of Prepaid isn't exactly something a company goes bragging about. There is a reason Verizon and AT&T have hundreds of millions of customers while Sprint and T-Mobile fight for the scraps. They just don't have the network coverage to back up their hubris-filled claims.

I don't dislike T-Mobile, but they can't continue on offering dirt-cheap service and paying ETFs forever. They are investing a lot of money in their network, and they're getting better. But they're still in last place as far as coverage goes.

Okay I will agree with you on T-Mobiles nation wide coverage. Your right to say that Verizon and AT&T have more cover than T-Mobile.

But when it comes to actual service offerings and prices, the only things verizon and at&t can claim is "the biggest network in the country" or "the strongest lte signal". Notice what's missing from these claims.

If you mean there overpriced cellular service. Then yes I could see how they don't like to talk about that in there ads.

And for those of us that never leave urban areas this means nothing. T-mobile is faster in my area than both AT&T and Verizon

Im currently riding through the middle of bumfuck Missouri and have decent tmobile service, is some rural areas they have decent service

I had perfectly good service most of the time in nowhere NC several months ago when I was there. It's not all bad in rural areas

I live in a rual area and get okay coverage. No 4g yet but its about 5 minutes away so I don't think it will be long. Its cheap enough and works, thats all I need.

Yea, some people don't understand that a lot of the country doesn't go to the sticks. I'm in central NJ, which isn't even urban it's suburban and our T-mobile coverage is great.

AT&T and Verizon have slightly more places covered, for the most part the coverage gap is just inside some very big buildings.
But their speeds are much slower and they can't come close in price to my 2 unlimited lines for $100

It's a cost/benefit ratio thing.
The occasionally dead spot in a big building (which I can work around with wifi calling) doesn't outweigh.

The much lower price for much more data.
the higher speeds,
The piece of mind of being able to use my smartphone for whatever I wish without worrying about overages.

Their coverage isn't as good in other areas of the country, I get that and I don't think t-mobile is for everyone.
But don't discount T-mobile just because it doesn't work well in your rural area, they are still a fantastic deal for many who live in more populated areas and they are improving rural coverage based on the success they are having in more populous areas. So hopefully good coverage will make it's way to you eventually.

How many of T-Mobile's customers travel enough to make this an issue?

In 2011 my Summer vacation consisted of a round trip between St. Louis and Yellowstone. At the time I was an iPhone ATT customer. ATT didn't impress me with their coverage. Even sticking to interstate highways, most of Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana were dead zones. Surprisingly South Dakota was pretty good but Iowa, not so much. There were also tiny spots of coverage in West Yellowstone, MT, inside the park near Old Faithful, Jackson and at the extreme North end of the park in Gardiner, MT.

While I'm sure ATT has improved, if 99% of customers spend 99% of their time in a population center with good coverage, why pay so much more for ATT and VZW coverage that's seldom used? If Summer vacations are an issue, folks can always pay for a cheap post-paid phone on ATT or Verizon and dispose of it after a month.

I agree but I assume you mean PREPAID.
You wouldn't want to sign up for Post Paid to use for a month

Yes, prepaid! My bad.

If you think about it, there are MSO, some foreign carrier, or a few tech companies like Google, MSFT, or Apple with enough cash and market need.

I would say buying TMO wouldn't go over well at tech companies, but the regulators would probably have no beef with that.

Not sure why DT would want to get rid of TMO. Granted they are barely profitable (cash flow looks good), but US spectrum is like tulips. If they get special treatment in 600 auction they would be crazy to pass that up.

IMHO the USG is pretty hostile to investment because the latest spectrum has all sorts of crap attached to it (and 600 is not gem), and US agencies and loathe to vacate said spectrum driving up costs dramatically.

Plus it's a safe bet most "partnerships" would eventually lead to that partner buying DT out and we'd be back to losing a nationwide carrier.

DT is already reducing is share package.
Hoettges is an idiot. The only place in the world DT is doing really well is in Germany where they still have a commanding position from the times of telecom monopoly ( just 20 years ago)

The problems TMO US has are direct results of DT's mismanagement in the past. When TMO US was a wholly owned subsidiary and under DT's direct command, DT refused to do a bunch of things, among others, to do the same carrier acquisitions Verizon and SBC/Tea did. They could have better rural coverage than Verizon.
Since then, just a bunch of ridiculous attempts to get rid off TMO US and constantly talking it down.
TMO US is on it's way up. Yes, they need a huge chunk of money now to invest, but the return will be phenomenal. But the greedy DT and it's share holders and executives just will not wait .
Anyone who knows DT and it's monopolistic past is not surprised at all.It's all about short term profits, market control and to the hell with the customers. While TMO US is a jewel DT is one miserable big corporate in the same line as Verizon.

Just dont team up with Altice PLEASE!, we already know suddenlink and time warner are gonna be wrecked

It would be such a funny thing if one day soon we read A headline that states.. " T-mobile usa has found a partner.. Comcast, NO.... TWC, NO... Dish network, NO.. who could it be ? T-mobile & Vodafone !

I think Verizon would have a temper tantrum while pooping there pants.

The problem with this is that DT and Vodafone are competitors in other markets

I think dish or direct tv would be good for tmo. They do a lot of rural business so it would be in their interest to expand tmo rural coverage , which would be good for.most of us. Even if not everyone switched more competition could make att and verison step up.

Read the news. They both might be not around much longer.

There are other scenarios there, not overly attractive. Like DT selling the majority of it's shares to O 2/Telefonica Espana, who has been busy with aggressive acquisitions around the globe and which is a pretty shitty company with a lot of disregard for the customer.

Maybe, but it looks like DTV s going to belong to AT&T. Perhaps now they will build a real death star.

T-Mobile is doing better all the time. Why exit the market when things are looking up?

If you've ever gambled for fun, you'd know when to cash in your chips. T-Mobile is very closely approaching that moment in my opinion.

I do hope they stick around. I've been happy with them for two years.

I love T-Mobile, we pay $117 after taxes for unlimited Voice and Texting plus 2.5GB of data per line. Music streaming from Di.fm and sky.fm does not count against my plan, and we don't pay overage fees for going over. The one time we did (One of the family lines when we went to HI) nothing happened but a text message, we didn't even get throttled.
I've looked at going back to AT&T, and even considered Sprint as both have better coverage at my house, but first we save a lot of money by not doing it. Second T-Mobile gave us this really nice Asus router for free and wifi calling works. Third, they just guaranteed our plan rate for as long as week keep it (Taken with a grain of salt).
When you consider road travel, yes AT&T has better coverage (work phone was AT&T) on 95 between Baltimore and Daytona, but not that much better. Not the $60 a month price difference better.