T-Mobile to light up 5G on Dec. 6, vows to ‘transform’ wireless service
Wireless carrier T-Mobile announced plans to light up nationwide 5G on Dec. 6, covering more than 200 million Americans and more than 5,000 cities and towns across the country, including areas in Puerto Rico.
In a press release, the carrier also unveiled a three-pronged strategy for customers to make the most of the next-generation network but conditioned the new offers to the closing of its merger with Sprint.
The Federal Communications Commission gave it’s OK to the deal this week, but it must now go through several other legal hurdles.
Fueled by a $40 billion investment in a 5G network and services expected to deliver 14 times more network capacity than today’s standalone T-Mobile, the combined T-Mobile and Sprint “plans to be a supercharged Un-carrier that is not only bigger — but also better. This is 5G for good,” said T-Mobile CEO John Legere.
“We’re building a 5G network that will allow us to deliver future New T-Mobile moves that are going to be so massive we couldn’t wait to share the first few,” he said. “We have definitively put a stake in the ground around the kind of company the supercharged Un-carrier will be and the ways we can put this radically better 5G network to work doing good for this country — good for consumers, good for competition and good for innovation.”
T-Mobile announced three new initiatives that will use the new company’s transformational network to bring accessibility and connectivity to the most deserving and underserved consumers across the country. The moves include:
- “Connecting Heroes Initiative,” a 10-year commitment to provide free 5G access — unlimited talk, text and smartphone data — to all first responders at every public and nonprofit state and local police, fire and EMS agency across the entire U.S.;
- “Project 10Million,” a new program designed to eradicate the homework gap that exists for millions of children by offering free service and hotspots and reduced cost devices to 10 million households around the U.S. over five years; and
- “T-Mobile Connect,” a prepaid service offering that will bring a new competitive $15 per month prepaid option – half the price of the lowest T-Mobile plan at present – to everyone, especially lower-income consumers.
“The extensive 5G investment we’re going to have in Puerto Rico will have a greater impact in rural and low socioeconomic areas,” said Jorge Martel, general manager of T-Mobile in Puerto Rico.
“In Puerto Rico, there is a much higher poverty rate, as well as a much lower high-speed internet connection rate than the United States,” he said. “The impact of 5G network deployment opens up an immense opportunity for socioeconomic development.”
On Dec. 6, T-Mobile “will be launching 5G in areas of all Puerto Rico, positioning the island among the first markets in the world,” he said.
