Gadgetory

this is Roger Chang we've seen that news and I'm here with t-mobile's chief operating officer Mike Seaver Roger thanks for having me so it's jump into this recent announcement you're letting your customers use our phones in Canada Mexico and without an extra fee so tell me more about it it's called mobile Without Borders and we called it that for a reason because what we're really doing here is tearing down another major barrier another border in the wireless industry it's kind of absurd the way this industry is always worked I mean basically the carrier's get together and they decide hey you know what we're gonna charge each other these roaming fees and then we're gonna turn around and Jack that up 90% and charge the the actual end users incredible fees just to drive across the bridge or go across a border what we're doing with mobile without borders is giving to our simple choice customers the ability to just call anywhere they want in Mexico and Canada in the United States and travel anywhere they want just as if it was your whole own home coverage area so we're basically giving all three countries for the price of one alright so that sounds really great but what's the catch well you know look I mean we're not really into caches are our favorite price point is free and that's what we're doing so basically every single plan that's available starting on Wednesday the 15th of July is includes this with whether it's a promotional plan whether it's a basic plan you get it and so if that plans available on the 15th of July you get this and and by the way and it's for no extra charge and this is kind of interesting because what the carriers tend to do is offer two paths either you don't sign up for anything where you could wind up if you just use your phone with AT&T and you don't sign up for anything in advance you could wind up spending $10,000 a week just to use your phone in Mexico the way you would normally use it at home well you bring up a TMT and obviously they have a vested interest in being in Mexico they just purchased two carriers down there with the intent of building out this network between the two countries how is what you're doing different from what they're doing it just it just showcases how our philosophy is totally different they're a command-and-control ownership kind of domineering type of company so what they what they do when they want to go to Mexico they flew down there and they bought up companies by the way so second tier third rate companies what we do and then what we do is so different than what we're doing is partnering with the number one and number two carriers in both of these countries that allows us to provide an incredible experience LTE in all the top cities but we don't have to own it you know what we've created here is a consumer movement in uncarrier that people want to be a part of consumers want to be a part of it and so to partners and it's so much better way to go I mean the world is still waiting you know AT&T said they we're gonna go buy all those companies for four billion dollars and that their customers would benefit well we're still waiting to see what that benefits gonna be right well let's talk a little bit about competition you added 2.1 million new customers in the second quarter what is the competitive landscape look like right now is it things are things getting better thinking worse quieter well things are accelerating for us you know this was a great quarter for us and it really showed that this consumer movement has legs you know everybody said things would quiet down we're not interested in things quieting down we're interested in continuing to bring people into the uncarrier 2.1 million customers in a single quarter Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure I recently took a page out of John Ledger's dictionary and called the uncarrier campaign bs without being so polite then how would you react to what were your thoughts on that reaction you think that was scrappy I think I kind of chalked it up to he was having a bad day you know let's face it q2 was coming to an end that day he was probably looking at his numbers who knows what motivated but we'll see pretty soon I'm sure yeah we'll see and certainly the other the other side of things with the bait - I mean Verizon has been making a lot of noise about making the point that no matter how blow your price is it doesn't matter if the coverage is lacking and well t-mobile has done a lot of work to improve the network in big cities your coverage isn't as ubiquitous as those other guys what are you doing to improve things well one of the things is the rapid rollout of low-band which we now have licenses covering a hundred and ninety million pops of the US and we're rapidly rolling it out and just clarification low bad spectrum is some kind of spectrum that's able to go across wide rage walls better it reaches further from the towers at because it's at a lower frequency and this is something that's new for us and so the other guys have had it for a long time we're now rapidly rolling it out and what that results in and this is huge an extra million square miles of coverage just in 2015 think about that we're more than doubling our footprint and so it's it makes a tremendous difference and and we announced this morning to that we're hitting 290 million pops that's two hundred million two hundred and ninety million Americans are now covered by our LTE network so we're in all the places where people you know work and play and we're rapidly improving in the rural areas as well because of this rapid rollout of low-band technology all right well last I want to ask about acquisition rumors DISH Network has sort of made it or it's been speculated that Dish Network is interested in buying t-mobile what do you think about that and have you thought about what it would be like to work for Dish chairman Charlie Oregon yeah you know our our strategy is pretty simple it's to position this company in order to succeed in an environment that's rapidly changing I mean think about it you know the all content of all kinds is landing on the Internet and the Internet is rapidly transitioning to mobile so there's this great convergence going on and that's got us looking around going okay how do we turbocharged this strategy of ours because the strategy we've got is working we've got an uncarrier movement a strategy a team and a brand that are on fire and what that does is it gives us lots of options because what we're doing is really working and so what we're looking for if we're looking are things that can turbo charge that strategy if there's a partner out there that could bring us spectrum or other raw ingredients that could take this thing that's working and position us for where we want to go then of course we'd be interested so that's that's the context that's really good to have the position of strength and a strategy that's working you know when all this convergence is happening because it allows us to be patient and thoughtful and look for strategies and potential partners if there are any that can turbo charge what we're doing our strategy and if and if possible make it more successful okay great thanks Mike really appreciate your time this is Roger Chang with CNN news thanks for watching