BOSTON, USA: AT&T goes on the offensive leading into CES, targeting T-Mobile customers with a New Year promotion and claims of better LTE and customer service.
AT&T's offers of $450 per line to T-Mobile customers is a bold move in the increasingly price-competitive US market, a pre-emptive strike as T-Mobile gears up for more Un-Carrier announcements at CES. The latest blog from Strategy Analytics' Wireless Operator Strategies (WOS) service, "AT&T on the Attack: New Year Promo Going After T-Mobile US subscribers", suggests T-Mobile should be concerned that its moves on AT&T's customers have finally prompted such a strong response.
"T-Mobile has had several good quarters in terms of ramping up gross adds and more recently net adds, and provoking an aggressive response from AT&T is a sign of its success but also of challenging times ahead," commented Susan Welsh de Grimaldo, author of the blog.
"T-Mobile has the most price-sensitive customer base of the major carriers and even a modest 5-10 percent of gross adds being attracted to the AT&T offer would represent 2-3 percent of lost postpaid revenue. Legere has done a great job in building value at T-Mobile and will for sure get rewarded handsomely, but this AT&T offer represents a real threat to those disaffected users impacted by inferior LTE coverage and limited 2G coverage as TMO migrates."