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T-Mobile

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T-Mobile finally gets its 2.5GHz spectrum.

Remember how T-Mobile won a bunch of mid-band spectrum in 2022? And then the FCC couldn’t actually grant the licenses? So Congress had to pass a bill allowing the FCC actually hand out the spectrum?

That really happened. Today, T-Mobile finally got access to over 7,000 licenses touching mainly rural areas across the country. The new spectrum will start coming online in the next few days.


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T-Mobile says we should stop looking at Down Detector.

The site, which tracks web service outages, is showing blips for Verizon and T-Mobile. Turns out... those are probably just from Verizon and T-Mobile customers trying to call AT&T users.

“We did not experience an outage,” T-Mobile writes.


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What do Zach Braff, Donald Faison, and Jason Momoa have in common?

Well, as of a couple of days ago, they’ve all sung about T-Mobile for a Super Bowl ad. Is it a good commercial? That depends on how much you liked Scrubs.


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Verizon will switch to Google’s Jibe platform to support RCS messaging on Android.

Years after switching to Messages as the default texting app on its Android phones, Verizon says it is “leveling up” the next-gen text message support with a plan to move from its self-hosted servers to Google’s Jibe RCS platform.

There’s no word on when the shift will happen, but it follows similar announcements from AT&T and T-Mobile last year and should allow for a more reliable experience, which Droid-Life notes should enable read receipts and interoperability with RCS on other networks.


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Free Hulu for T-Mobile Go5G Next subscribers.

Starting from January 24th, customers paying at least $100 per month for T-Mobile’s yearly phone upgrade plan can enjoy Hulu (with ads) at no additional cost, alongside Apple TV Plus, Netflix Basic, as well as MLB.TV. That works out to around $7.99 per month of extra streaming freebies.


Mint Mobile is notifying customers about a security breach.

Without mentioning this on its social media channels or anywhere on its website that we could find, Ryan Reynolds’ Mint Mobile chose the last Friday before Christmas to tell customers it’s had a data breach. Cord Cutters News and Bleeping Computer point out this Reddit comment from a company account saying affected customers should have an email from “no-reply@account.mintmobile.com.” Leaked information includes names, phone numbers, email addresses, SIM/IMEI numbers, and some service plan details.

Mint Mobile is apparently still in the process of being acquired by the famously insecure T-Mobile that has had two breaches this year and nine since 2018.


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The FCC is going to let SpaceX test its upcoming Starlink satellite cellular service.

The FCC issued SpaceX a “Special Temporary Authorization” so the company can test “direct-to-cellular communications payloads” to unmodified cell phones, as reported by PCMag.

SpaceX and T-Mobile are planning to launch texting through the “Starlink Direct to Cell” service in 2024, with more functionality coming in 2025.


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Congress just delivered T-Mobile’s Christmas present early.

T-Mobile paid for a chunk of 2.5GHz spectrum licenses earlier this year, but hasn’t been able to access them because the FCC’s authority to actually hand out the licenses has been in limbo. Now, Congress has passed a bill that allows the FCC to give T-Mobile access to the spectrum, which appears to be destined for fixed wireless. How thoughtful!


The race to 5G is over — now it’s time to pay the bill

Networks spent years telling us that 5G would change everything. But the flashiest use cases are nowhere to be found — and the race to deploy the tech was costly in more ways than one.

T-Mobile says its ultra capacity 5G network now covers 300 million people.

The “ultra capacity” label is just a fancy name for T-Mobile’s mid-band and mmWave 5G networks. In addition to reaching this coverage goal “months ahead of schedule,” T-Mobile also announced that it has expanded its overall 5G coverage to over 330 million people.


An image showing T-Mobile’s coverage in the US
Image: T-Mobile
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T-Mobile can now “slice” its public 5G network into private 5G networks with dedicated bandwith.

We’ve been talking about whether 5G was worth the hype for a few weeks now (sometimes, sort of, mostly it hasn’t returned the investment) and the best idea anyone really has is “private networks” where commercial customers can set up their own high-bandwith low-latency 5G networks to do... stuff. And now T-Mobile can do that by “slicing” its public 5G network, which it says it did successfully in June at a Red Bull event, creating a slice for a broadcast drone to achieve 276Mbps uplink speeds.

Meanwhile, nearly 20,000 visitors were in attendance, using their devices as they normally would – uploading pictures and videos of the event. Because of network slicing and traffic management, their traffic did not impact the Red Bull production – and vice versa.

Neat! But let’s not forget T-Mo can do this because it was allowed to buy Sprint and reduce wireless competition, which in turn has allowed it to raise prices and act way more like a traditional carrier.


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Apparently, they were all losers in the race to 5G.

Wireless carriers haven’t been able to monetize 5G, and telecom companies are in crisis. Sean Kinney at RCR Wireless bears the bad news in a new report from an industry event:

The optimism around 5G as some sort of panacea to any sort of business problem is giving way to disillusionment. Cost pressure is mounting, headcount reductions are happening, and outright cynicism is in the offing. This raises a question: if operators, for whatever reason, cannot leverage 5G to grow revenues and deliver innovation, do they drop the pretense and face the harsh reality that connectivity is a commodity and should be sold as such? 

Guess we can look forward to even more creative new ways for carriers to charge us more!


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Mint Mobile, which is partly owned by Ryan Reynolds, might be acquired by T-Mobile.

The two companies are apparently in talks about a potential acquisition, according to Bloomberg. Maybe T-Mobile really liked Reynolds’ new Mint Mobile ad written by ChatGPT.

Reynolds became a part owner of the budget wireless carrier in 2019, and Bloomberg reports he owns approximately a fourth of the company. The Deadpool star also owns a Welsh pro soccer team with actor Rob McElhenney.