T-Mobile Closes Buy of Metronet
T-Mobile’s buy of a stake in fiber-based provider Metronet as part of a joint venture with investment firm KKR closed Thursday, T-Mobile announced. T-Mobile closed its JV with Lumos in July. T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert, during a call with analysts Wednesday, highlighted the closing of the deals (see 2507230066). “With both up and running under the T-Fiber banner in the second half, we are poised to deliver 100,000 or more fiber nets on top of our planned 5G broadband nets this year,” Sievert said. “We are off to the races.”
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Mike Katz, T-Mobile president of marketing, strategy and products, said one of the things that really attracted the company to both fiber companies is that they are “the best in the country at building greenfield fiber.” Many places remain in the country “where you can be first to market [on] fiber,” Katz said. T-Mobile will commercially launch T-Fiber in the Metronet markets later this year, he said.
Sievert also highlighted the 454,000 net adds to T-Mobile’s home broadband service. “Word of mouth” is the biggest sales tool T-Mobile has, he said. “The satisfaction rates of this product are through the roof,” he said. “People love it, and they're pretty surprised and delighted at the performance.” The launch of T-Satellite is also proving popular, Sievert said. The service expands T-Mobile’s network “to connect customers in the 500,000 square miles of this country that are not covered terrestrially by anyone and with a truly differentiated service,” he said. “I think it's going to be really a popular catalyst to bring people into that deeper relationship with T-Mobile,” he said.
Jon Freier, president of the T-Mobile Consumer Group, said in a blog post Wednesday that T-Satellite is especially critical given the onslaught of disasters that have “devastated communities across the country.” The satellite service “enables your smartphone to automatically connect to a constellation of 650+ satellites -- basically cell towers in space, zooming around the earth 24/7 in what's called low earth orbit,” Freier said. “No towers nearby? No problem. If you can see the sky, you’re connected. That’s our vision.”