T-Mobile’s UnCarrier Ten event is coming up within the next few days, November 10th to be exact. With the date drawing near, there are many rumors regarding what T-Mobile will be bringing to their customers next.
According to The Washington Post, free video streaming should be offered next by T-Mobile. The mobile carrier T-Mobile has a reputation of stepping outside of the box and offering their customers features that would not be seen on other mobile carriers. This is the reason that T-Mobile deems itself the Un-Carrier, to set itself apart from the rest of its mobile competition. Over the past few years at T-Mobile’s Un-Carrier events, the company has ended mobile contracts for consumers, removed overage charges, and brought more innovations for customers.
T-Mobile’s Un-carrier 6 event in June 2014 announced Music Freedom, which allowed customers to stream music without it counting toward their data on T-Mobile. More than a year later, it seems that T-Mobile is now going to be taking a bigger step, or so it is believed, offering the same with video streaming, which would make using services like NetFlix and HBO free while on your T-Mobile data service.
T-Mobile has not given any hints regarding what will be announced at its Un-carrier event, although T-Mobile’s banner for the Un-Carrier 10 states “We Never Hit Pause.” The use of pause does seem to hint at some sort of video service announcement.
The rumor is truly being fueled on Twitter by Evan Blass, a freelance tech editorialist. There is nothing in his tweets that hints that the information is just a rumor. It appears that Evan may have gotten his information from within T-Mobile.
When eWeek spoke to T-Mobile there was no confirmation or denial regarding the free video streaming
“There are always rumors ahead of our Un-carrier events, and it’s part of the fun—we love it! We can’t wait to shake up the wireless industry, yet again, with Un-carrier X on November 10th—stay tuned!”
T-Mobile’s John Legere has even addressed on Twitter the fact that rumors have been circulating as the date for their event draws near.
Well it’s that time again. We put out an #UnCarrier invite and the “leaks” and “guesses” start flying. Keep trying ;-))
— John Legere (@JohnLegere) October 29, 2015
In December 2014, the Un-carrier 8 event brought what T-Mobile calls “data stash”. This lets customers keep any unused data in their monthly data plans and roll it over for future use, providing them with more control and fuller potential use of the data allocations that they pay for each month. Announcements like this are what have been setting T-Mobile apart from the other mobile carriers in the industry.
T-Mobile’s opponents have criticized the practices as they give wealthy companies the opportunity to provide consumers with benefits that would be too expensive for smaller rivals. Regulatory scrutiny may be triggered by T-Mobile’s exemption program, under the government’s neutrality laws.
If T-Mobile is in fact offering free video streaming to its customers, this would be a hard offer for the competition to overcome, as most mobile networks are working to get their users to not use data-hog applications such as NetFlix as these applications take up the most bandwidth and are costly to the providers.
It also brings into question if this would be a realistic offer from T-Mobile, as it will indeed be at a major expense to T-Mobile to have its pipes filed with customers constantly streaming video.
November 10 should reveal the real intentions of T-Mobile’s Uncarrier 10 event.
[Image from T-Mobile]