When the AT&T + T-Mobile deal fell apart just over a year ago, I wrote that T-Mobile’s best hope was go switch its focus to data. The carrier hasn’t followed my advice (that’s not a surprise 🙂 ), but is going to take some steps that are helpful in unbundling its plans so if you own your phone outright you can get a lower rate.
But although this is a useful step in its own, I have to doubt whether it’s going to draw in a lot of new people to a network that they may perceive as inferior. I predict it won’t change the market position of T-Mobile in a meaningful way.
The future for T-Mobile is still data, not voice. But more importantly, the future is where a single subscriber has lots of devices using data, all sharing a common pool of data access.