T-Mobile Is Becoming a Cable Company (engadget.com)

T-Mobile has revealed that it's launching a TV service in 2018, and that is has acquired Layer3 TV (a company that integrates TV, streaming and social networking) to make this happen. The company thinks people are ditching cable due to the providers, not TV itself. Engadget reports: It claims that it can "uncarrier" TV the way it did with wireless service, and has already targeted a few areas it thinks it can fix: it doesn't like the years-long contracts, bloated bundles, outdated tech and poor customer service that are staples of TV service in the U.S. T-Mobile hasn't gone into detail about the functionality of the service yet. How will it be delivered? How much will it cost? Where will it be available? And will this affect the company's free Netflix offer? This is more a declaration of intent than a concrete roadmap, so it's far from certain that the company will live up to its promises. Ultimately, the move represents a big bet on T-Mobile's part: that people like TV and are cutting the cord based on a disdain for the companies, not the service. There's a degree of truth to that when many Americans are all too familiar with paying ever-increasing rates to get hundreds of channels they don't watch. However, there's no guarantee that it'll work in an era when many people (particularly younger people) are more likely to use Netflix, YouTube or a streaming TV service like Sling TV.

Comments

Bad headline

[bananaquackmoo]

They're not becoming a CABLE company, they're becoming a company which provides video. HUGE difference.

Re: Bad headline

[Anonymous Coward]

That happens to be precisely what companies like Cox, Charter, and Comcast do. T-Mobile is becoming a cable company. I think you fail to understand what a cable company actually is or what they do.

Re: Bad headline

[Anonymous Coward]

Difference in technology and application however.

T-mobile doesn't have the ability to do television currently other than netflix, because in the US it only has wireless, and nobody wants to pay a kings ransom to watch TV on LTE. It's the only wireless carrier without a triple-play option (tv, internet, phone/wireless-phone)

AT&T has the ability to do this. So does Verizon. Comcast does not have wireless. Time Warner needs to stay independent from the internet service providers.

What should be happening is that the content providers should be required to be divested from the internet service providers and television providers. The internet service subsidizes the losses from television and content production.

Re: Bad headline

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to stick my penis into your butt now. Hopefully it makes you smarter.

Re: Bad headline

[Obfuscant]

Sling isn't a "cable company". Hulu isn't a "cable company". T-Mobile is not becoming a cable company. Cable companies deliver video using a specific medium. Can you guess what that might be? No, maybe not, because I think you fail to understand what differentiates a cable company from a wireless company.

Here's a hint. T-Mobile is one of those ISPs who aren't limited by the municipal franchise requirements for access to the poles and conduits. That's because they don't use __________

Re:Bad headline

[Anonymous Coward]

They're not becoming a CABLE company, they're becoming a company which provides video. HUGE difference.

Same difference.

According to this story, T-Mobile is planning to acquire a company called Layer 3 which currently offers TV service in a few markets. Their prices and programming are pretty much the same as what you get from your local cable TV company.

Ultimately this is nothing more than "everything you hate about cable TV but done over the Internet". It's meaningless bullshit that is going nowhere. T-Mobile must have some money that it needs to waste.

Re: Bad headline

[Anonymous Coward]

Can someone mod this guy up. I mean , he's obvious, but he's still fucking funny.

Re: Bad headline

[Anonymous Coward]

So T-Mobes has the cellular infrastructure and bandwidth to handle this? T-Mobile is HQed in Seattle (Bellevue to be precise), and their coverage around the Puget Sound is a little "light" in a lot of places, if its light around their HQ town, then how is it everywhere else? Thou I will admit over the last 3 years many areas that were 1/5 bars are now 3/5 or 4/5.

Re: Bad headline

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got you fam.

Re: Bad headline

[Anonymous Coward]

T-Mobile is headquartered in Bonn.

Re:Bad headline

[Anonymous Coward]

The game for ISPs right now is to try and get some exclusive content that people want to watch, or a service that people would miss if they switched providers. That's exactly what cable is about. That's how they get you to pay the extortionate monthly fees. It doesn't actually matter what the medium is, because wireless too has very limited potential for competition due to the limited spectrum and the way it is leased to the mobile companies. This is a (rather desperate) attempt to be more than a dumb pipe to the consumers. The network operators, mobile or not, don't just want to get paid for moving the bits. They want to get paid for the bits.

Re: Bad headline

[Anonymous Coward]

Mm . . . not a huge one, and the other telcos and tech companies are already following suit, and they are all vying to be in content production, as well. Technology, media, and the web are about to cease to exist as we have known them. Welcome to cable 2.0, which will be ten times more anti-competative and corporate than before. We are ceasing to be a free country at a rapid clip. Screw parties, all hail the mighty corporation. This may seem like a small deal, but it's symptomatic of something much more over-arching.

Re: Bad headline

[grahamsz]

Layer3 push their service a lot in my area (as we have muni fiber), and they do seem like a cable company replacement.

They've got a high monthly cost, require that you use their boxes, and won't sell a plan that doesn't include a bunch of channels I dont want.

In short, they've taken everything we dislike about the cable model and brought it into the internet age. Still it seems unreasonably popular with people my parents age, gives them the trendy feeling of cord-cutting, getting their tv over fiber and not actually losing any of the comcast experience.

Media consolidation

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want the big bucks and the leverage to squeeze the other guys out, you need the content and the pipes. T-Mobile is adding tv, Comcast is offering cellular service, att bought direct tv, etc.

Surprised Disney is buying fox and not Verizon.

Re: Media consolidation

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a trend started by the Obama administration when they allowed mergers like the one between Charter and Time Warner Cable. We have the Democrats to thank for the consolidation, just like Democrats supported telecom deregulation and Bill Clinton signed it into law.

Re: Media consolidation

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a trend started by the Obama administration when they allowed mergers like the one between Charter and Time Warner Cable. We have the Democrats to thank for the consolidation, just like Democrats supported telecom deregulation and Bill Clinton signed it into law.

Really? Telecoms? Of course they did, and so did republicans, because they're getting kickbacks for making these laws.

Reagan and the Younger Bush did the similar things with the housing markets.

The Republican business owners decided to abuse the system that was intended to help people and they hid their illegal activities.

This is because republicans are greedy and want to fill their pockets, and they don't care if consumers lose out.

So this is not republican or democrat. It's about greed, and I think we'd all like to keep big business out of government.

Maybe...

[vanyel]

If they will truly have the content reliably (the main reason I never started using Hulu et al - too many stories of episodes disappearing), and the streaming apps work better than any of the others I've seen so far, then maybe...

Re:Maybe...

[Actually, I do RTFA]

(the main reason I never started using Hulu et al - too many stories of episodes disappearing

In fairness, that's because Hulu is trying to feel like TV. Episodes only live for like 5 weeks after being published and get published every week. Which makes sense because its owned by the major TV networks. Can you imagne what would happen if they

Re:Maybe...

[AvitarX]

If they all of the coke?

Re:Maybe...

[rudy_wayne]

If they will truly have the content reliably (the main reason I never started using Hulu et al - too many stories of episodes disappearing)

Sorry, but T-Mobile's service won't be any different. They're just re-selling content that is owned and controlled by someone else.

Move along. Nothing to see here.

Re:Maybe...

[vanyel]

That is my expectation as well

Re:Maybe...

[Anonymous Coward]

If they Covfefe?

I can see this working

[AvitarX]

They dedicate 40mbps*50 channels for 2gbps, that's what, 2-10% of a tower (I'm seeing LTE towers are built for 20-100gbps), assuming they can make devices that pick up broadcastlike.

So for a 2-10% reduction in mobile data speed for customers, they can offer 50 high quality (4k HDR) channels using H.265 (I assume, I don't actually know how efficient it is, I'm basically taking blue ray * 4 (pixels) / 2 (efficiency)).

If they can sell/rent a receiver for a reasonable price that can take their broadcast they can have super high quality live TV for minimal bandwidth reduction for their regular market. They can then lean on people having home Internet or much reduced resolution for on demand content (maybe 5 mbps as Netflix recommends for HD), this is in the realm of what I typically get at a minimum when checking my LTE speed (5-50 in my home city). They could maybe limit on demand content to SD speeds (1.5mbps), but allow you to subscribe to shows and have access the day after aired at 4k, downloading in off times (including allowing the downloading of Netflix downloadable shows).

This seems like a very doable and smart thing in an era of people hating cable.

Re: I can see this working

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI...you are really overestimating at 40mbps. Netflix is only about 15mbps for 4k, and I think they're only using h264. I doubt they'd go significantly higher than that

Re: I can see this working

[AvitarX]

Yeah, but I've read that they're 4k isn't much better than upscaled bluray, and I don't think it's HDR (which is only a 25% increase at worst I think (8->10 bits, probably easier to compress though).

My point was they could offer a significant number of channels better than any video most of us have ever seen (I've personally never seen a 4k HDR video that I'm aware of, maybe most people have and I'm wrong).

Bluray quality, but 4k and HDR would be a pretty killer feature I think, and based on my experience with cable (not giving me HD without spedning significantly more) would be something they have that nobody else does. If they're broadcasting it (rather than streaming it personally), it's probably worth using 10% of a tower's capacity to be the best.

Basically, they could offer 50 channels at better than anything else on offer, better than anything I've seen, and able to max out what can be seen on many TV sets (which are mostly not getting more than Netflix 4k, or bluray 1080p right now). They could be the company that brings 4k HDR to TVs, and use that as their killer feature.

Realistically, they'd probably have 3 classes of channel, high bitrate (I proposed 40mbps), standard 4k (Netflix's 15mbps), and HD (Netflix's 5mbps), this would allow them to have 100+ channels, plus some error correction for the inevitable dropped packets, while still only using 2-10% of a tower's capacity.

Re: I can see this working

[Anonymous Coward]

100 channels might serve 30 homes, it'll never work. It doesn't scale.

Re: I can see this working

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got a 4k video sitting here on my hard drive. I don't know what kind of encoding was used but dividing the size by playing time works out to 30mbps.

15 mbps for 4k sounds like shitty picture quality.

Re: I can see this working

[AvitarX]

Why doesn't it scale? Is their any fundamental reason they couldn't use an LTE like technology to broadcast using similar (RF) bandwidth as LTE (I'm using broadcast to mean 1 sender many receivers)?

The broadcast part is pretty much scaled by definition.

for mealtime streaming they'd likely use 5mbps (Netflix HD), that gives a tower 200 homes at a 10-50% reduction in overall network bandwidth (20-100gbps tower), there are probably places that would work too (sparser suburbs, not universally).

There's potential to use caching too, to prevent popular content from hitting the back haul, the LTE network itself is apparently capable of up to 18(subdivided)*128(users)*600mbps (this seems really high, just reading this), if the top 10% of content is 75% of streaming (made up numbers but seem reasonable), that's essentially allows for a lot of streaming that doesn't hit the back haul (perhaps only the popular content can be streamed HD in real time).

if 75% of streams (and all live) are cached, then 20gbps back haul can handle all live (100 channels in HD for 2gbps, with a mix of 5-40mbps), + plus 75% of
  cached streaming for some small part of back haul, but a significant part of the Wireless network itself, plus another whole lot of 5 mpbs streams to the end user.

It seems very scalable to me even without being able to broadcast the signal (just caching the live TV, plus the last 1000 hours of streamed content (40mbps * 60 seconds * 60 Minutes / 8 (bits in a byte) gets me 20 TiB of storage for 1100 hours).
as
That can be the most popular 1000+ episodes of the week, which must be a huge percentage of the non on demand part, if a cell tower really is capable of 1.3tbps, that's 34k steams at 40mbps, assuming 1 in 3 people are streaming at a time, that leaves plenty of space for overhead and the 100mbps of capable of hitting the internet traffic do to back haul.

It seems very scalable to me.

I'm actually going to say that I think they could probably get away with streaming their own service at 40mbps, with only very rarely needing to drop uncached streams to 5mbps.

There are 6 Tmobile towers in my county of 200 thousand households, so it won't work to provide 40mbps for everything even with the newest tech everywhere, but I could see them being able to handle a significant number of households with those six towers (if we say each household is using 3 streams on average at peak (your number) and they allow one 1 ultimate quality and 2 HD per a house for 50 total mbps (I think that sounds really hi), that's 400 mbps at peak, each tower would need to be able to provide 1/3 theoretical maximum to cover 25% of the houses, if it's profitable they can build out more.

Re: I can see this working

[wyattstorch516]

Depends on the content. If it is sports or a heavy action movie then it would be shitty quality. If it is a sitcom then 15 mbps works fine.

Re: I can see this working

[Anonymous Coward]

> which is only a 25% increase at worst I think (8->10 bits, probably easier to compress though)

For same quality (which essentially means you mostly only get 8 bits of quality out), 10 bit is actually EASIER to compress as you have additional precision in the transforms available (saving up to 10% I think?). That is the reason why many animes you find online use 10-bit H.264 compression despite the material being only 8 bit.
Now HDR is somewhat different from JUST going to 10 bit, and if you actually want the extra quality it will cost something, but nowhere even remotely close to 25%. In fact, since support for 10-bit H.264 is so horrible you'd probably connect 10-bit with a switch to HEVC (or VP9 or...), which probably means you STILL end up in reduced bandwidth area.
So I don't think 10-bit/HDR has a relevant bandwidth cost really.

Re: I can see this working

[EndlessNameless]

Why doesn't it scale? Is their any fundamental reason they couldn't use an LTE like technology to broadcast using similar (RF) bandwidth as LTE (I'm using broadcast to mean 1 sender many receivers)?

Most companies are moving to video over IP, which is a 1-to-1 transmission. This allows viewing on demand, which is generally a desirable feature and often profitable.

Technically, IP does support multicasting, so they could do broadcasts. However, no new services are doing this, and even traditional cable companies are starting to offer IPTV services. What you are describing is possible, but no one expects it because the industry is moving away from it.

I would be thrilled if they did this and offered channels a la carte, but I'm not expecting either. The channel bundling is a contractual requirement from the content producers, so it will probably continue in some form. They will have to accommodate bundled channels in any broadcast scheme.

E.g., ESPN tells Comcast that they have to choose between carrying every ESPN channel or none. Bundling works across brands as well. Viacom owns BET, MTV, and Nickelodeon---do you ever see a cable package that includes one of those channels without the others?

Re: I can see this working

[EndlessNameless]

The only way to know for sure is to compress it further and find out.

Some content is adversely affected by lowering the bitrate. Some is not. Also, the encoder and decoder play a role, so you may get different results simply by viewing the content from a different machine/player. It's not purely a black-and-white issue.

Most cable companies are broadcasting content at a significantly lower quality resolution and/or bitrate than you can get on Blu-ray. It partly depends on what each channel sends to them, but they can and do upsample, downsample, or compress the streams that they receive via satellite.

Re: I can see this working

[Anonymous Coward]

You should look up how multicast works. FYI, most places use it (when they own the last mile) and it works wonderfully.

Re: I can see this working

[AvitarX]

Channels a la carte and multicast are somewhat mutually exclusive (or there's a big base and then a per channel fee).

The benefit of multicast is that the marginal cost of a person approaches 0. So it makes sense to bundle a bunch of live offerings together and give them to everybody.

Providing us each 5 different channels costs very little extra (infrastructure wise) than providing us both all 10. Similarly, providing us both 20 adds very little. The idea of bundling a core group of channels that offers a couple for each type of person allows a service to appeal to a family household, and only require a slight subsidy from people that may only want 5 of the channels.

Bundling can be too far (as often is the case beyond extended basic cable), but having a core bundle makes sense (as many of the live streaming services seem to be doing).

As for the ability of IPTV to do this, I assume that is part of why TMobile is buying L3 rather than starting from scratch (like Sony did for example).

TMO is buying the expertise and experience doing IPTV efficiently, they will marry it with their Network expertise and hopefully (for them) it will mean the ability to efficiently do IPTV without needing to run wires (L3s biggest struggle I'd bet).

It may be a big failure, but I see why it made sense to them. They could buy a relatively small company (2 city cable provider), that gives them the potential to add $30+/month to each of their customer's bills. For them that's growth that may cost less than expanding the network to get a new $80/month customer. L3s tech is basically about scaling IPTV, this is why L3 has value beyond in house development (also, content contracts probably save some time).

Lastly, even without broadcast style tech, an LTE tower often has more capacity than the back haul, 20TB of cached data at a tower can exploit this (all live TV on a 2 second delay and 1000 hours of the most recently streamed on demand).

Doing a tower to cellphone stream, rather than internet to cellphone, is extremely cheaper in the sense of bandwidth, even if no type of multicasting is involved.

I can't find any stats on what percentage of streaming is the most popular 1000 hours, but it has to be a lot of it, and approaching 100% during the heaviest usage times (think game of thrones finally, or even a popular show dropping a season on Netflix). 1000 hours gives you the top 100 movies and the top 60 seasons of TV). If TMobile is the content provider, they can basically take advantage of surplus tower (radio surplus vs the back haul) surplus for free. The fact that back haul to towers is the limiting factor in LTE capacity may be why they decided to do this, they can now use the excess bandwidth without hitting the back haul.

Cable is dead

[PhrostyMcByte]

Most under 20 are getting their entertainment from Youtube, Hulu, Netflix, etc. -- and I'd bet many kids under 10 are growing up without the classic TV experience that most adults remember. Hell, I know a kid who'd rather watch Youtube or Twitch than any TV show... and he tells me most of his class is the same way.

There's definitely room for a new internet provider, but I think cable is firmly and deservedly dying.

Re:Cable is dead

[Billly Gates]

Most under 20 are getting their entertainment from Youtube, Hulu, Netflix, etc. -- and I'd bet many kids under 10 are growing up without the classic TV experience that most adults remember. Hell, I know a kid who'd rather watch Youtube or Twitch than any TV show... and he tells me most of his class is the same way.

There's definitely room for a new internet provider, but I think cable is firmly and deservedly dying.

Not anymore. Starting tomorrow net neutrality is going to be voted down. Portugal's national ISP as an example forces you to pay for extra things they firewall or throttle down by default forcing to to a tiered la carte system. Want to watch Netflix? That will be $35 extra a month. Amazon video? ANother $25 a month etc.

Of course it will just be cheaper to buy cable you know. Tmobile will use the l3 background to blackmail you and your ISPs so they can quad drip after your ISP triple dips by charging you, cloud provider, and now l3 for each packet courtsey of freedom errr deregulation.

Re: Cable is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess what? Old school and believers in the original ideals of the internet will consider that damage and route around it. Or find alternate ways of streaming it.

If companies want to shoot themselves in the foot for greed ... So be it. The sad thing is they they have money to buy politicians to enact laws which ensure their profits

Re:Cable is dead

[AvitarX]

Why wouldn't Tmobile use their own capacity?

I assume that's the goal, to offer you TV service that is 100% independent from Comcast, AT&T etc.

Re:Cable is dead

[Obfuscant]

Starting tomorrow net neutrality is going to be voted down. Portugal's national ISP as an example

I've seen an internal Comcast memo that says that as soon as the FCC rescinds their regulations they're going to start hiring customer service reps who speak only Portuguese so they can better replicate the kind of service the national ISP of Portugal offers.

Of course it will just be cheaper to buy cable you know.

Huh? If cable is tacking on $60 a month for Netflix and Amazon, then it would seem to be a lot cheaper to go with T-Mobile and a $20/month internet service from them.

Tmobile will use the l3 background to blackmail you and your ISPs

What the hell is an "l3 background"? And how does a small cable company that is available in only a few cities blackmail anyone?

Re: Cable is dead

[rudy_wayne]

Guess what? Old school and believers in the original ideals of the internet will consider that damage and route around it. Or find alternate ways of streaming it.

Apparently you have no understanding of how things work.

A very large percentage of people (in the U.S.) only have one choice for a broadband Internet connection and its one of the companies who have spent a lot of time and money lobbying against net neutrality.

Re: Cable is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

That whole idea of routing around the damage won't work. You're shut down on all the fast lanes. Have fun getting routed to the charity lane every other hop.
You may as well try streaming over Tor.

Re: Cable is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be far better if they would shoot themselves in the head rather than the foot.

Re:Cable is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Level 3 communications runs WAN and internet backbones that ISP uses

Re: Cable is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

As if there weren't enough reasons not to live in the US already...

Re:Cable is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Capitalisation makes the difference between l3 (=i3) and L3.

Re:Cable is dead

[jbmartin6]

Check Snopes, the Portugal example is false.

Re: Cable is dead

[c6gunner]

Portugal's national ISP as an example forces you to pay for extra things they firewall or throttle down by default forcing to to a tiered la carte system. Want to watch Netflix? That will be $35 extra a month. Amazon video? ANother $25 a month etc.

That's just complete and utter horseshit. Portugal is in the EU and actually does have net neutrality laws in line with EU mandates. Claiming that they charge more for certain services is just a complete lie based on a tweet by some idiot politician who had no clue what he was talking about.

I can understand the talking heads on TV news saying such ludicrous things, but I'm truly surprised to see someone on Slashdot parroting their nonsense.

Re: Cable is dead

[Billly Gates]

Portugal's national ISP as an example forces you to pay for extra things they firewall or throttle down by default forcing to to a tiered la carte system. Want to watch Netflix? That will be $35 extra a month. Amazon video? ANother $25 a month etc.

That's just complete and utter horseshit. Portugal is in the EU and actually does have net neutrality laws in line with EU mandates. Claiming that they charge more for certain services is just a complete lie based on a tweet by some idiot politician who had no clue what he was talking about.

I can understand the talking heads on TV news saying such ludicrous things, but I'm truly surprised to see someone on Slashdot parroting their nonsense.

Then you tell me?

Re: Cable is dead

[c6gunner]

I'm familiar with that model because I was actually looking for a Mexican SIM card, and Mexico has a similar setup for many of their carriers. Short version: mobile carriers sell data bundles by the gigabyte, as they do everywhere in the world, but they also sell "packages" on top of the data plans which can be applied to specific services. So, say you buy 3 gigabytes of data, plus pay an extra $5 for the "social media" package; you now have 3 gigabytes to use for whatever you want, plus you can use social media sites as much as you want on top of that; they don't get counted towards your total.

They're not limiting which sites you can visit, and they're not artificially crippling or boosting certain sites. The data plan you bought still gets you full access to the entirety of the internet. If you find that you use 6 gigs of data every month, and half of that is Facebook, you can absolutely buy a 6 gig per month data plan if you want. Or you can buy the 3 gig plan, plus the social media package. Your choice.

Nothing at all like what the talking heads want you to think it is.

In other future news

[bobstreo]

Comcast and Spectrum citing the revocation of network neutrality, throttle Tmobile video services to 2.1Kb/s

Re:In other future news

[Obfuscant]

Comcast and Spectrum citing the revocation of network neutrality, throttle Tmobile video services to 2.1Kb/s

What a fantastic universe you live in, where Comcast can reach out to the local T-Mobile tower and throttle the LTE data it sends, or would even bother trying. Is the sky blue on your planet, like it is on Earth here?

Re:In other future news

[Anonymous Coward]

Who owns the backhauls for the towers? I don't see too many microwave relay towers for cellular these days.

Re:In other future news

[Anonymous Coward]

Comcast and Spectrum citing the revocation of network neutrality, throttle Tmobile video services to 2.1Kb/s

What a fantastic universe you live in, where Comcast can reach out to the local T-Mobile tower and throttle the LTE data it sends, or would even bother trying. Is the sky blue on your planet, like it is on Earth here?

You need to read the article. This is not wireless. At least not entirely. T-Mobile plans to buy a company called Layer 3 which offers "HD and 4K channels streamed using the H.265 video codec and a custom set-top box. It also has partnerships with Internet providers to provide the last mile connectivity. "

Re:In other future news

[Obfuscant]

You need to read the article. This is not wireless.

You need to read the article. Layer 3 is a small cable company that uses fiber to deliver video efficiently using internet protocols. They're buying Layer 3 for the streaming technology, not for the existing fiber plant. They're not going to start trying to lay fiber everywhere to compete with the cable companies, they're going to be the same wireless that they've always been.

Yeah, they will probably maintain what Layer 3 already has, but even then Comcast will have nothing to do with the service and none of the data will touch a Comcast network. Layer 3 uses its own fiber to the home and their own STB to provide their service. Comcast cannot throttle packets that don't cross its network.

Very low bar

[erp_consultant]

As near as I can tell the bar in this industry is set so low...well, let's just say that T-Mobile should easily exceed whatever laughably passes for customer service in the Cable industry. Cable providers are routinely ranked at the very bottom - right down there with airlines and government. Yeah, it's that bad.

All they really have to do is:

1) NOT treat their customers like shit
2) Be price competitive with other streaming services
3) And....don't treat your customers like shit

The cables companies don't seem to be able to do any of these things...especially #1 & #3. For T-Mobile this should be like shooting fish in a barrel.

Re:Very low bar

[Anonymous Coward]

total agreement. dropped ATT like a rock and almost cried when I needed some customer service with TMOB, literally tears of joy. Poor signal where I live (for all carriers) - ATT said sorry nothing we can do for you, TMOB says "here's a free LTE extender" and with wifey traveling the world for work, TMOB and their free international data is just. plain. amazing. I'm totally on board team magenta. I know its just a company but I can't figure out how they provide such great service and are so much cheaper than ATT.

Alright, I'm not a shill, just a super-duper satisfied customer.

Re:Very low bar

[erp_consultant]

Yeah I've had the same experience. Former AT&T customer here who was basically driven to leave them and right into the waiting arms of T-Mobile. Customer service has been excellent so far and the signal is just as good as AT&T if not better. And it's far cheaper. AT&T can go pound sand. I've never going back to those clowns.

I think it's the Richard Branson model - find some industry with crappy service and make it better. He started out in the record industry and moved to the airline industry. He made a killing in both simply by providing superior customer service.

I'm not sure if this is going to work for T-Mobile in the TV business but if they come out with something I'll give it a try, based solely on the great service I have been getting from them so far.

Re: Very low bar

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 to all the T-Mobile kudos. Ive moved my family from at&t AND sprint, and am blown away how different the two types of companies can both serve the same market. I'm surprised T-Mobile is #1. One rep went on and on about how the ceo showed up in the Maine call center, on Christmas day, dressed as Santa , handing out merch.

I also ditched DirecTV who were reaming me. Just OTA and Netflix now.

So I WELCOME T-Mobile getting into this biz.

T-Mobile

[Anonymous Coward]

All the liberals love T-Mobile.

Are they evil now? Just asking.

Bloated bundles

[Anonymous Coward]

T-Mobile doesn't like bloated bundles. Good.

Re: Bloated bundles

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah right tell me the "one" plan wasn't bloat.

Throttle DOWN

[Billly Gates]

Boy as Americans be prepaired to pay. Pay more now for your own TV streaming services as of tomorrow will be voted off by the appeal of net neutrality. SInce L3 owns the backbone for hte internet tmobile can now blackmail comcast to for tripple dipping which comcast will then charge you again for both ends and now the backbone for mega profits. Can't wait for my $200 a month internet bill and lacarte with VPN being firewalled out. VPN will come as an additional charge to unblock of course etc.

This has got to be intentional as these companies are salivating at the thought of making our internet like cell phones before 2007 where you had to pay a monthly fee for each service such as adding a ringtone or a map program. Net Neutrality now is the only force holding them back.

Re:Throttle DOWN

[Obfuscant]

SInce L3 owns the backbone for hte internet tmobile can now blackmail comcast

Are you deliberately confusing "Layer 3" with "Level 3" just so you can spread FUD and make stuff up?

cell phones before 2007 where you had to pay a monthly fee for each service such as adding a ringtone or a map program.

I've never paid to add a ringtone or a "map program".

Re:Throttle DOWN

[SlaveToTheGrind]

This has got to be intentional as these companies are salivating at the thought of making our internet like cell phones before 2007 where you had to pay a monthly fee for each service such as adding a ringtone or a map program. Net Neutrality now is the only force holding them back.

Yeah, because that's exactly what we all had to do between 2007 and 2015. I'd suggest decaf.

Re:Throttle DOWN

[mentil]

My old slider phone had mapping software built-in... that would only work if you paid a (presumably one-time) fee to activate it. Presumably the money went to the app developer rather than the carrier.

will you own the Layer3 TV boxes now? or be forced

[Joe_Dragon]

will you own the Layer3 TV boxes now? or be forced to rent them like it is now?

They don't force you to rent phones!

They did what?

[JustNiz]

>> claims that it can "uncarrier" TV the way it did with wireless service

It already did what now? Wireless still seems like a giant tripartate monopoly to me.

Re:They did what?

[Obfuscant]

Wireless still seems like a giant tripartate monopoly to me.

How do you have a "tripartate monopoly"?

You mean like AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon, Metro PCS, and the 26 other wireless services that this website allows you to compare? Is "tripartate" a latin word for "31"?

Yeah, not all carriers cover all places, but there's a lot more than 3 in most of the US, and "three" is hardly a monopoly.

Re:They did what?

[Anonymous Coward]

there are only a handful of actual wireless carriers.. all the rest just resell access. at&t, verizon, tmobile, sprint, and a few smaller ones like u.s. cellular. those are the actual, real ones. and some of those also own some resellers, like metropcs is owned by tmobile and boost by sprint, to further confuse things.

Re:They did what?

[JustNiz]

Really AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon
Sprint are on their own standard.

Re:They did what?

[AvitarX]

MetroPCS was a real cell company before Tmobile purchased them.

Now they're basically Tmobile with a different price structure ($30 less/month, prepaid (I think), no international, and always throttled like a tmobile unlimited user that broke 35GB (Tmobile customers get priority over metroPCS)

Cable companies have worst customer service rating

[raymorris]

>what companies like Cox, Charter, and Comcast do.

This is what Cox, Charter, and Comcast.do:
--
  already targeted a few areas it thinks it can fix: it doesn't like the years-long contracts, bloated bundles, outdated tech and poor customer service that are staples of TV service in the U.S.
--
Of the eight companies with worst customer service ratings in America, two are major cable companies.

Their *goal* is to provide cable-like TV without becoming a "cable company" like Comcast and Time Warner, companies consumers loathe.

Their "uncarrier" initiative with mobile phones included things like getting rid of the half-dozen extra fees that typical carriers add to your monthly bill. Ever noticed "terms subject to change without notice"? T-Mobile is doing away with that. They are trying to be a different kind of company providing these services. I hope they succeed.

Stupid Move T-Mobile

[WindowsStar]

T-Mobile is dumb I cut the cord and don't have TV at all. I thought I couldn't live without it but I have found that it was the best decision I ever made. Not only am I saving $300 US a month I don't have to watch commercials anymore. Netflix and all the local channels stream for free, and guess what NO commercials (I think they don't show commercials because you can watch anywhere in the world and they want to be paid for that). So why would I pay for TV again? Cable companies have missed not only the boat but the whole ship on this one. Instead of raising the price every 6 months and taking channels away (especially the ones I watch), they should have been lowering the price to keep us. They send me a begging letter every month trying to get me to go back. No you idiots, just because I can have it at $100 US a month for 12 months (then back to $300) is still a bad deal with 8 minute commercial breaks now-a-days and the start and end of the show in a tiny window while they play more commercials and the extreme cost!!! NO NO NO NO I say. TV is dead!

Re:Stupid Move T-Mobile

[AvitarX]

There will always be a place for live TV, if they got a good enough deal on the purchase they may be able to make money.

If the tech really does more efficiently stream live TV over IP, they could be the ideal choice for things like HBO (GoT finale was hard to watch on HBO go), Sports, Special events, idle background with no need to make a decision (I'm pretty sure this is HGTVs entire market).

Sure, the live TV market isn't going to be as big as all of cable, but that doesn't mean they are overpaying for the tech to be better at it.

They aren't buying a big established business for its customers, they're buying a small one for the tech, which may or may not be worth it, but isn't completely braindead either.

Re:Stupid Move T-Mobile

[wyattstorch516]

Where do you live that has local channels streaming for free with no commercials. Everywhere I know local channels don't stream at all and they all have commercials except for public TV(which has fundraising messages instead).

If you can get by with Netflix streaming (content shrinking every day) then good for you. Other people would like the option of getting some TV channels. It all comes down to services and price point and that is yet to be determined.

Re:Stupid Move T-Mobile

[martrootamm]

IPtv (tv over IP) works really well in Estonia, and several years ago, the country's main service provider (incl. mobile & Internet) made it possible to order individual cable channels in addition to a basic bundle. This, and the possibility to order pay-per-view movies makes their entire proposition a delight. So, T-Mobile might be on to a very lucrative market segment.

IPtv also makes it much easier to do viewership statistics, and thus gather better data on viewership of both tv shows and ads. These kinds of statistics are way more reliable over IPtv than through a Nielsen box.

kings ransom

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like I pay T-Mobile to stream Spotify for my snowflake millennial kids ... Oh, wait, I don't pay T-Mobile An-nee-freakin-thing for the LTE to stream Spotify. Ya think, mebee, they'd do something similar for video? Member?

Result of Net Neutrality repeal

[wyattstorch516]

This is the new investment that the FCC was talking about that would happen as a result of repealing Network Neutrality.

T-Mobile will build a 5G network that can provide high speed internet access sufficient to stream video to all its customers. Video streamed from their service will be exempt from data caps which will allow them to recover the investment necessary to build out the network.

Nobody will be required to subscribe to the video service but this allows people the option of replacing their home internet service completely along with getting rid of cable TV.

Re:Result of Net Neutrality repeal

[Anonymous Coward]

5G is still in testing, and has not yet reached major availability. 5G certainly pertains to mobile service, is over-the-air, and is meant for mobile only.

At best, T-Mobile are probably seeking to offer something, that is based on wire and backbone, and which in my view is highly unlikely to be based on over-the-air mobile service (aka 3G, 4G, 5G). In that respect, T-Mobile are expanding their service palette. What they appear to offer, is not available from cable companies and the traditional mobile providers.

Net neutrality means also, that up-and-coming companies that want to create jobs, get a fair chance in offering their services. No net neutrality would mean leaving the U.S. customer-facing Internet in several competing silos that want to cancel each other out in a situation, where most U.S. customers can only have one provider, if any. No net neutrality is equivalent to YouTube pulling its plug on Amazon Kindle devices, thus leaving Kindle owners out to dry. Or the Portuguese "internet".

No. They're apparently not.

[JustNiz]

Watch the video. They are clearly primarily aiming at watching TV on mobile devices, ie. phones. Doing anything with or over cable seems at best likely to be secondary to their main strategy.

Re: BUSH YEARS

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. Under Obama? Where were you under Bush when AT&T acquired MediaOne and TCI. Making AT&T Broadband the largest cable company in the USA. And then Comcast acquired AT&T BroadBand? Then Comcast acquired Adelphia Cable and a number of other smaller companies including BEND cable and Insight?

Re: BUSH YEARS

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, AOL bought Time Warner, and Viacom bought out UPN.
All of UPN's programming got shifted to AOL-TW's CW channel.

T-Mobile will fix customer service? really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pie in the sky. Customer Service is on the list.

They have sucky customer service like the other phone companies. That is not something they are going to improve on with india based call centers.

Re:T-Mobile will fix customer service? really?

[yelvington]

Apparently you're not a T-Mobile customer, or you wouldn't be posting about "india based call centers."

Re:T-Mobile will fix customer service? really?

[Voyager529]

Apparently you're not a T-Mobile customer, or you wouldn't be posting about "india based call centers."

Not entirely. T-Mobile farms out to India during low volume times (and presumably high volume times to handle overflow and limit hold times). 2:30AM on Thanksgiving, you're getting what is arguably the best call center in India - the handful of times I've been routed to them, they've been far and away the best experience I've had with offshore tech support; good English, friendly demeanor, genuinely listened to what I said, and they weren't completely beholden to scripts. Still, you're not getting Stephanie from Nebraska the same way you would at 6PM on any regular Thursday.

Addendum

[martrootamm]

Telia, the major operator in Estonia, have in the past also offered some triple bundles, which consist of basic Internet (up to 120 Kbytes/s, which in the Flash era made it just barely possible to reliably watch/listen to YouTube in 360p), a basic tv package (plan), and landline phone service in one. Well, as landline as it can get through household fiber. And on top of that one can order additional cable channels and pay-per-tv.

Sports

[Bohnanza]

After arguing with Verizon recently, I thought about "cutting the cord". But I am old and I watch baseball. It seems that I have no way to do so UNLESS I have cable. I can get MLB "All Access", but this should really be called "All Access Except for the Local Team that You Want to Watch". Or I could possibly watch using the NBC Sports app, but I have to have a cable account number...

Interesting...

[wardrich86]

1. Will their service be ad-free?
2. Will their service run entirely as an on-demand service?

If either of those is NO, it's not worth my time.

TV vs food?

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting contrast of stories today.

How is "Cable Company" defined?

[hackel]

Is it still a Cable Company if it delivers video streams over fiber instead of coax? Is it about the physical cable line running to your home, or the content? I wouldn't consider a company that provides DSL a cable company, but obviously they still use a cable, and one can receive IPTV over that connection. The terminology is extremely poor here.

I could never imagine going back to programmed video streams like TV, let alone one that had commercials. Apparently T-Mobile has identified a market for it. Pretty much older people or those who care about sporting events. Still, I would like to see it go away sooner, rather than later, and this is going in the wrong direction.

Re: BUSH YEARS

[Anonymous Coward]

Comcast bought Bend Cable, in Bend, Oregon?