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More than five years after TPC Mobile's successful acquisition of MetroPCS, the operator is questioning its brand image and market positioning to attract more customers.
MetroPCS, which had largely retained its distinct identity after its acquisition, focuses on the prepaid segment of the wireless market, requiring its customers to pay monthly and typically target people with few or no credit histories and incomes. lower. Since T-Mobile bought the unit, its subscriber base has more than doubled to 18 million, with the brand currently expanding from just 12 markets to around 100 nationwide markets.
Now, T-Mobile (tmus) wants to make big changes. Beginning in October, MetroPCS will be renamed "Metro by T-Mobile" and will add enhanced unlimited data plans to attract a wider audience. The new advertisement will emphasize the fact that its service operates on the same wireless network as T-Mobile. By aligning with several other popular brands, Metro's two new unlimited plans will include Google's Google One cloud storage at no additional charge and a plan will also include Amazon Prime, the giant's free delivery and video programming service. e-commerce.
The first Metro plan will start at $ 50 for one line and reach $ 140 for four lines. It will include unlimited 4G LTE data for phones, 5GB per month for laptops or tablets and Google One. The second new plan starts at $ 60 for a line and rises to $ 150 for four lines. It also receives unlimited 4G LTE phone data, 15GB of connection-sharing data, and includes both Google One and Amazon Prime. Both plans usually prevent slow download rates if customers use too much data in a month. Here, the threshold is a generous 35 GB. And streaming video is downgraded to DVD quality.
The new plan prices are just above Metro's existing limited data plans, which start at $ 30 and $ 40 for a line, and just below the regular T-Mobile Unlimited plans, which start at $ 70 for a line. Previous Unlimited Metro plans without the add-ons started at $ 50 for a line.
A new ad campaign will use the tagline "That's Genius" and will emphasize both that the Metro service has broad and fast coverage thanks to T-Mobile and links to Google (googl) and Amazon (amzn). It's in tune with the rest of the wireless industry that is turning more and more to bundles with popular online brands. AT & T (t) offers many customers free HBO wireless or its new WatchTV app; Sprint launches Hulu subscriptions; and Verizon (vz) gives Apple Music a free six-month trial. T-Mobile itself gives an unlimited number of Netflix data clients (nflx).
MetroPCS President Tom Keys, who joined the company in 2005, said the redesign is the result of customer surveys and the discovery that many had a bad impression of his unit. Of the millions of people living within one and a half kilometers of a store selling a MetroPC service, only about 30% were subscribers or had already subscribed or contemplated subscribing, while 70% were completely excluding the brand. . "We found some problems, some that we probably had created," says Keys Fortune. "It's never easy to look in the mirror but it was useful."
The new goal is to escape the stigma of prepaid service and appeal to all types of customers, he says. Many consumers did not understand the operation of the prepaid service and others felt that it was inherently worse than the postpaid service, without realizing that MetroPCS was running on T-Mobile's network. The name change, the addition of new unlimited plans and the partnership with Google and Amazon aim to change these views. "We think we can break that myth," says Keys.
The redesign has been going on for about a year and is unrelated to whether or not T-Mobile is successfully merging with rival Sprint (s), Keys said. In a document filed with the Federal Communications Commission last week, the two carriers pledged to continue offering the two prepaid brands Metro and Sprint, Boost and Virgin, even after the merger.
"All that's left to come," says Keys. "This movement we are doing has not been contemplated at all with the potential merger. This is just a standalone ad. "
(This story was updated on September 24 to clarify that the new unlimited plans have the same price as the previous unlimited plans.
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