T-mobile Uncarrier 5.0 + 6.0 (free t-mobile test drive, unlimited music streaming)

[paperwastage]

Uncarrier 5.0 - Free Test-drive

• Free test-drive of t-mobile network ) using iPhone 5S for 7 days
  
  Starts June 23, limited 1 per billing address/credit card, 18 years and above.
  
  $700 hold on credit card, get iPhone 5S in mail. $100 fee if phone screen is cracked, water damage or non-functional or active Find My iPhone feature
  
  MUST return phone in retail store
  
  Only free unlimited talk/text/data (unlimited 4G, 3GB for tethering/hotspot) within US, no international coverage
  
  
• WideBand LTE in 16 markets - 15+15 mhz or more
• VoLTE in 15, Samsung S5 has VoLTE
• http://www.droid-life.com/2014/06/1...16-wideband-lte-markets-and-15-volte-markets/

Uncarrier 6.0 - [Music Freedom](

• Unlimited music streaming from top music services (specific services listed below), does not count towards your data bucket. Music will work at full speed even after throttle kicks in
  Unknown start date
  
• Rhapsody Unradio ((Google play), iTunes ad-free listening, unlimited skips, streaming of songs you want - Starts now (in Google Play store), June 22 (via t-mobile.com)
  
  Free for unlimited data customers (w/ +$30 data plan, doesn't include grandfathered +$20 customers), $4/month for other T-mobile users, $5/month(?) for non-T-mobile users
  

> Music Services whitelisted

>> * [Pandora](http://www.pandora.com/) (publicly listed company)
* [Rhapsody](http://www.rhapsody.com/start) (independent company?, also partnering w/ t-mobile for [Rhapsody Unradio](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rhapsody) starting June 22)
* [iHeartRadio](http://www.iheart.com/) (Clear Channel Broadcasting)
* [iTunesRadio](http://www.itunesradio.com) (Apple)
* [Slacker](http://www.slacker.com/) (? ownership)
* [Spotify](https://www.spotify.com/us/) (? ownership)
* [Milk](https://www.samsung.com/us/showcase/milk/) (Samsung)
* [BeatPort](http://www.beatport.com/) (SFX) (?) - was in the presentation slides, but not on the musicfreedom page

> [Music Services not yet included, can be voted on:](http://t-mobile.com/musicfreedom)

>> * [Prime](http://www.amazon.com/primemusic) music (Amazon)
* [Beats](http://www.beatsmusic.com) music (Apple)
* [Google Access Music](https://play.google.com/about/music/allaccess/#/) (Google)
* [Grooveshark](http://www.grooveshark.com) (subsidary of Escape Media Group, )
* [Jango Radio](http://www.jango.com)
* [Last.fm](http://www.last.fm/) (CBS Interactive)
* [Rdio](http://www.rdio.com/)
* [Sirius XM](http://www.siriusxm.com/) (publicly listed company)
* [Sony Music](http://www.sonymusic.com/) (Sony)
* [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/) (privately held)
* [Tunein Radio](http://tunein.com/) (privately held)
* [Xbox music](http://www.xbox.com/en-US/music) (microsoft)



**Uncarrier 7.0 coming late summer**

http://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/28iom5/tmobile_uncarrier_50_60_recap/

 

[EightySix Four]

Uncarrier 6.0 is a weird reverse net-neutrality issue IMO.

 

[Ravynmagi]

Looks like Google All Access is leading on the voting so far. I just put in my vote for that.

 

[Red Storm]

Google All Access is the paid only model right? I would really want the regular Google Play Music to be free, that would be awesome!

 

[Roland00Address]

Can someone do the math for me how much total data per hour, and how much bandwidth you would need to do a high quality streaming audio?

I ask for at least to me instinctually audio bandwidth usage should not be growing with faster speeds like video usage would (higher speeds will cause people to want higher quality video). If T-Mobile can handle the increased amount of bandwidth right now, it will be a relatively fixed cost that won't be drastically increasing in the future right?

 

[Crow550]

Can someone do the math for me how much total data per hour, and how much bandwidth you would need to do a high quality streaming audio?

I ask for at least to me instinctually audio bandwidth usage should not be growing with faster speeds like video usage would (higher speeds will cause people to want higher quality video). If T-Mobile can handle the increased amount of bandwidth right now, it will be a relatively fixed cost that won't be drastically increasing in the future right?

This is most likely because audio doesn't use a lot of Bandwidth.

So therefore it's easy to do and sounds better to users and for them without taxing the network too much.

 

[paperwastage]

Can someone do the math for me how much total data per hour, and how much bandwidth you would need to do a high quality streaming audio?

I ask for at least to me instinctually audio bandwidth usage should not be growing with faster speeds like video usage would (higher speeds will cause people to want higher quality video). If T-Mobile can handle the increased amount of bandwidth right now, it will be a relatively fixed cost that won't be drastically increasing in the future right?

http://www.audiomountain.com/tech/audio-file-size.html

Assuming you go for the higher nitrate (192kbps aac), you use maybe 100MB/hour. If you are live streaming, you are using at least 24kilobyte/s. 3g could provide that speed. Let's say 4 hours/day*30= 12GB

I assume a lot of services (non-live) cache or predownload the entire song (eg Pandora), so you just need 2seconds of LTE to download the song and then left the radio rest

 

[bearxor]

The test drive is interesting, but the $700 hold on your CC is still a big barrier for a lot of people. I couldn't go a week and a half with a $700 hold on my account.

Frankly, I'd rather purchase a Lumia 521 and one month of the $30 100/5GB plan than do this test drive.

Which is what I did last year anyways.

 

[paperwastage]

Uncarrier 6.0 is a weird reverse net-neutrality issue IMO.

yeah... it's against the letter of net neutrality (can't treat specific types of data differently)

but it's pro-consumer, t-mobile isn't get paid by any side (consumer or service, unlike at&t's sponsored data), eating the cost itself, and allowing consumers to vote on the next service to be whitelisted

it's hard for a music start-up to break into this though... consumers are overwhelming voting for google music to be included next...




what I would have preferred... close to the same effect, but t-mobile can't brand it as nicely as "music unlimited"

-> Increase the throttle speed from the current ~15kbytes/s to 50-100kbytes/s

You can stream music at that speed (live definitely, harder for pre-cached services like pandora). You still hit the cap faster, but you can still stream after the cap... no net neutrality problems

 

[SunnyD]

I'm down with this.

Just added a line for my daughter last week, bringing me up to 4 lines, $100/month, 15% corporate discount. I get 3g and LTE coverage at my house which is arguably well outside of city limits in the middle of redneck country. T-Mo keeps doing this kind of stuff, I'm not complaining.

 

[crashtestdummy]

yeah... it's against the letter of net neutrality (can't treat specific types of data differently)

but it's pro-consumer, t-mobile isn't get paid by any side (consumer or service, unlike at&t's sponsored data), eating the cost itself, and allowing consumers to vote on the next service to be whitelisted

it's hard for a music start-up to break into this though... consumers are overwhelming voting for google music to be included next...




what I would have preferred... close to the same effect, but t-mobile can't brand it as nicely as "music unlimited"

-> Increase the throttle speed from the current ~15kbytes/s to 50-100kbytes/s

You can stream music at that speed (live definitely, harder for pre-cached services like pandora). You still hit the cap faster, but you can still stream after the cap... no net neutrality problems

Legere claims that he wants "all" music streaming services to be whitelisted... if they really want that to happen, it shouldn't be too hard to automate something like that.

It makes a lot of sense from their point of view. Music streaming uses about 1MB/min of bandwidth. The reason they put limits on data usage is that they don't want everyone downloading at 1MB/s. If they're streaming music, they're not likely to also be watching streaming video, so they're ok with that trade-off.

I'm torn about this from a net-neutrality point of view as well. I don't think your solution would be as effective for someone who is constantly streaming music, though. If you music usage would bring you to the cap two weeks in, while you'll still be streaming music after you hit the cap, your download speed will still suffer for everything else.

Ultimately, the idea of "net neutrality" is only relevant because we have such a severe lack of competition in home broadband. If Comcast is screwing with my service, I want to be able to move over to Time Warner, who might be promising not to pull the same shenanigans. In the absence of that, we rely on government regulation to keep these local monopolies in check.

While the landscape is still not great, wireless has more competition (for now). The result is that someone like T-Mobile is able to attract my business with a more customer-friendly model. If someone like AT&T or Verizon want my business, they can offer me something that I like even more.

 

[cpacini]

Honestly I think this is great for Apple too. I'm probably going to do a test drive just to get my hands on an iPhone. I've been on Android and haven't really considered switching before but getting to use a 5s for a week for free could give me a chance to change my mind if I like the phone.

 

[Roland00Address]

yeah... it's against the letter of net neutrality (can't treat specific types of data differently)

Its against the intention of net neutrality but it is not against the letter of net neutrality. Net neutrality states the speed has to be the same, you can't prioritize the type of data that runs on the network and make one type of data work faster or better than another. How you charge for that data has never been a problem until now.

Now companies such as cable companies want to figure out how to get more revenue streams, they want to eviscerate net neutrality in all but name. To make it crappy title but in the end toothless. Comcast (I am just picking a random cable company in my area, it applies to all of them) wants you to sign up for xfinity videos and xfinity tv videos do not count against your data cap even though both are just packets of bytes, they want to do this to the end user. Comcast wants not the end user but certain web companies to pay them more to guarantee faster speeds such as netflix or google as well as things that are of vast importance in reliability such as medical or scientific businesses that need constant, fast, and secure internet.

The people who want to kill net neutrality want to charge both users of the internet, the end user the person and the supplier of goods such as netflix and google.

 

[AznAnarchy99]

This is pretty crazy. I use about 10GB of data a month which a lot of it can be attributed to GoogleMusic All Access.

Now do we get it all for free or do we have to pick and choose one?

 

[bearxor]

This is pretty crazy. I use about 10GB of data a month which a lot of it can be attributed to GoogleMusic All Access.

Now do we get it all for free or do we have to pick and choose one?

It's all white listed. So any of the music providers they've chosen you can use or you can use multiple.

Also, don't forget that speedtest.net is white listed on TMobile as well and doesn't use your data allotment.

 

[s44]

The test drive is interesting, but the $700 hold on your CC is still a big barrier for a lot of people. I couldn't go a week and a half with a $700 hold on my account.

I think that's actually the idea. T-Mo is making a play for the high-spending good-credit customers from other carriers. The pure value folks they either already have or are targeting with the Metro brand.

 

[Roland00Address]

I think that's actually the idea. T-Mo is making a play for the high-spending good-credit customers from other carriers. The pure value folks they either already have or are targeting with the Metro brand.

Yep use the prepaid to target people with bad spending habits, bad credit, or just don't make that much money and can't spend that money on a phone.

Promise a better experience to the people with money by giving them features that they like but don't cost t-mobile much money. Make the process easy for them to switch and make it so that they don't feel like they are locked down, such as a contract or try before you buy. Be different than the rest of the cell phone industry. This will attract the customers with money to switch to your brand and if you treat them well with cool novel features the other cell phone companies do not have (and do not cost t-mobile much money) and you will establish brand loyalty in those customers. You make the real money on the 50 to 100 dollar monthly cost per data phone. Rack in growth due to the increase number of customers and hopefully customers upgrading from prepaid to monthly bills (the cool new features attract them), and use that money to invest in your network. Eventually when your network is very competitive invest less money in your company network and just rack in profits.

T-Mobile strategy believes two things. That they can get people to switch from AT&T and Verizon and thus gain market share. That eventually speeds of the wireless internet will be high enough and that it is novel features, brand loyalty, reliability of service, and offering something different that will separate you from your competitors. Invest in the short term and lose money to attract those customers, for long term the technology costs of running a wireless network will go down and thus you just rack in money. Furthermore the more customers you have the more money you get for those technology costs are largely fixed costs (once the cellphone tower has been upgraded to the newest technology, and you have fiber connected to the tower you are just paying for electricity and other similar costs to run the tower.)

AT&T and Verizon hate this for they like the current status quo for currently they are racking in the money for they have the big market share. Sprint on the other hand, well sprint is sprint, it is not going to change without vision and marketing and a significant investment into their network.

 

[Phokus]

T-mobile's CEO (or the people working under him) are marketing geniuses

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I feel like this is getting further away from "uncarrier." The next step should be demanding non carrier exclusives and non-carrier specific models. So none of that LG G2 with a charging backplate only for Verizon crap. Then again I don't think T-Mobile gets many special handsets. Doing away with a carrier logo on the phone would help.

 

[Roland00Address]

I feel like this is getting further away from "uncarrier." The next step should be demanding non carrier exclusives and non-carrier specific models. So none of that LG G2 with a charging backplate only for Verizon crap. Then again I don't think T-Mobile gets many special handsets. Doing away with a carrier logo on the phone would help.

How the hell is T-Mobile going to do that? Verizon pays LG money to have that feature in and keep it out of the opponents versions. Its called an exclusivity contract. T-Mobile does not have the market share in the us to do so, and the frequency bands make it impossible for us just to import oversea phones. Sure you can make a perfect phone that is a global phone like the iphone, but that adds to cost, adds to thickness, and requires a more expensive modem and antenna array. There is a reason why apple is only currently doing this for they have enough volume to make a universal design make sense, this is the OEM problem not T-Mobile problem and thus T-Mobile has very little control over it without shooting themselves in the foot and demanding more expensive phones to have every feature.

 

[paperwastage]

How the hell is T-Mobile going to do that? Verizon pays LG money to have that feature in and keep it out of the opponents versions.

T-mobile pays LG not to do any exclusive contracts

I feel like this is getting further away from "uncarrier." The next step should be demanding non carrier exclusives and non-carrier specific models. So none of that LG G2 with a charging backplate only for Verizon crap. Then again I don't think T-Mobile gets many special handsets. Doing away with a carrier logo on the phone would help.

well, the industry is moving to VoLTE, and hopefully better modem/chips to support available LTE bands...

hopefully one day, we'll see one (or just a couple of) phone model, working across multiple carriers. with the recent changes to the phone subsidy model across Verizon/AT&T (Mobile Share Value/MORE everything that don't subsidy phones), people can choose to pay for service on a carrier, and separately choose&pay for the phone model they want

 

[trmiv]

Got my Test Drive device yesterday.

So far, not even close to impressed. At my house I barely get 4G upstairs, but I can get around 3Mb down, around .5Mb up. Not great, but usable. If I go downstairs, it goes to 2G, and I can't even complete a speedtest. This is just in my house. If I doesn't work at my house, it's a nonstarter for me.

My Verizon signal isn't the best at my house, but at least I get consistent 4G and around 8Mb, down/up.

 

[Strk]

Got my Test Drive device yesterday.

So far, not even close to impressed. At my house I barely get 4G upstairs, but I can get around 3Mb down, around .5Mb up. Not great, but usable. If I go downstairs, it goes to 2G, and I can't even complete a speedtest. This is just in my house. If I doesn't work at my house, it's a nonstarter for me.

My Verizon signal isn't the best at my house, but at least I get consistent 4G and around 8Mb, down/up.

Why aren't you using wifi at your house?

Don't get me wrong, tmobile will have more issues than verizon because of their frequency, but still. I mean, I've thought of going to Cricket because my signal at work is pretty bad in large parts of the building, but perfectly fine everywhere else, so I'll stick with tmobile.

 

[trmiv]

Why aren't you using wifi at your house?

Don't get me wrong, tmobile will have more issues than verizon because of their frequency, but still. I mean, I've thought of going to Cricket because my signal at work is pretty bad in large parts of the building, but perfectly fine everywhere else, so I'll stick with tmobile.

I'm not test driving the device to see if it works on wifi. The signal needs to be reliable everywhere I frequent, including my house, or it's not worth it to me. Not long ago I had issues with my home internet so I just wifi tethered my S4 and was able to work without issues until that was resolved. With T-mobile that wouldn't even be an option.

 

[sweenish]

Got my Test Drive device yesterday.

So far, not even close to impressed. At my house I barely get 4G upstairs, but I can get around 3Mb down, around .5Mb up. Not great, but usable. If I go downstairs, it goes to 2G, and I can't even complete a speedtest. This is just in my house. If I doesn't work at my house, it's a nonstarter for me.

My Verizon signal isn't the best at my house, but at least I get consistent 4G and around 8Mb, down/up.

At least you're getting to discover this firsthand for free.

It sucks that you won't be able to make the switch, but I think this story is a big win for the test drive program.