T-Mobile and Sprint promise increased competition for cable



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T-Mobile planned to attack the cable TV industry before even agreeing to combine with its wireless rival Sprint, but says it can expand its efforts more widely and more quickly if regulators approve the merger .

With the upcoming 5G faster wireless technology, a combined T-Mobile and Sprint could offer an alternative home-based Internet service to cable by 2024 in 68% of the Comcast territory (cmcsa), the largest provider cable, and 64% of the area served by Charter Communications (chtr), the second largest cable operator, according to Mike Sievert, T-Mobile's chief operating officer. Nationally, the service would cover 52% of all postal codes and could count nearly 10 million subscribers by 2024, he added.

"Our business planning has confirmed that there is a significant market for New T-Mobile's home broadband offerings at planned price and service levels," Sievert said in a statement to the Federal Communications Commission on Friday. must approve the merger.

T-Mobile has not talked much about its intention to tackle the cable industry since it last year bought Layer 3 TV's startup video provider for $ 325 million. John Legere, CEO of T-Mobile, said at the time that the cable market, with its high prices and poor customer service, "seemed wireless in recent years." In general, the carrier plans to use the same "strategy used in wireless, which meant a loss of practices that customers did not like, such as two-year contracts and overtime charges. data.

Companies have often made extravagant promises to increase competition to encourage merger regulators to approve their transactions and not always follow them. And some opponents fear that regardless of the impact on the cable, the market for wireless phones would become less competitive if the two operators merge. Plus, even without T-Mobile and Sprint, Verizon and AT & T are working on important 5G offerings to compete with cable.

But T-Mobile (tmus) and Sprint (s) say that by combining, they will have more resources and additional broadcast licenses to enhance their 5G network. The faster, higher capacity wireless 5G networks could replace traditional cable TV and Internet services of cable companies.

In another section of the FCC filing on Friday, written by Neville Ray, chief technology officer at T-Mobile, the company said the company's 5G network would reach 451 megabits per second by 2024, fast enough to download a high definition movie. in about 1 minute. But without the merger, the expected average speed of T-Mobile would be 100 Mbps and that of Sprint 116 Mbps, said Ray.

Sievert has disclosed to the FCC an important detail about T-Mobile's promised internet and home video competitor: how much will be cheaper than cable services. But the detail was overshadowed by the public version of T-Mobile's repository. "These speeds and coverage areas will be offered at a significantly lower price than traditional broadband providers, with monthly prices generally forecast [redacted] inferior to traditional services, "wrote Sievert.

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