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Customer satisfaction is the key to T-Mobile’s recent success. During the last year, the mobile-communications giant changed several aspects of its business by addressing consumer complaints about overage costs, phone upgrades and service plan contracts. But T-Mobile isn't stopping there. CEO John Legere wants to do what his competitors at AT&T, Verizon and Sprint haven’t done yet: Change the wireless industry forever.

Expect to see some big changes at T-Mobile in the next year or so. Following a round of network modernization upgrades, T-Mobile plans to bring LTE (Long Term Evolution) coverage to 250 million customers by the end of 2014 and an additional 50 million by mid-2015.

"Right now, T-Mobile covers 96 percent of Americans, and over the past year, we've completely shattered records with the fastest 4G LTE deployment the U.S. wireless industry has ever seen," said Legere, president and CEO of T-Mobile. "Our competitors want you to believe our network doesn't measure up. But that just isn't true. And American consumers are going to see right through the spin and half-truths when given the facts."

This means T-Mobile’s entire 2G/EDGE network will be upgraded to the faster 4G LTE service adding coverage and speed to additional customers. It also plans to use its recently acquired wireless spectrum to also further expand its coverage by the end of 2014.

Keeping It Simple

T-Mobile's latest announcement comes after several other promotions that are geared increasing customer satisfaction.  One of T-Mobile's first bold moves was creating Simple Choice Plans, which does away with annual service contracts. All T-Mobile's plans offer unlimited talk and text. Users can also select from 500MB or 2.5MB data plans, or they can get unlimited data plans for a few dollars more.

T-Mobile now has both regular service plans as well as pre-paid plans on all its devices. Both offer the same amount of talk, text and data for the same price.

Paying the Penalty for New Customers

In another daring measure, the "Uncarrier" has agreed to pay early-termination fees for those trading in their devices or phones and switching to T-Mobile. In some cases, this fee runs as much as $650 per phone line when combined with the phone or device’s maximum $300 trade-in value.

This market plan did not go over too well with competitors either. AT&T quickly rebounded by offering a similar $450 promotion for T-Mobile users to switch to one of AT&T's plans. However, that offer was only for a limited time and ended after one month.

These programs were major players in the presale success of T-Mobile’s latest Samsung Galaxy S5 campaign. Within a couple days of the presale announcement, T-Mobile had more than 100,000 orders and more would pour in for during the end of March and beginning of April. Check out more information here.

Living Up to Its "Uncarrier" Name

Other recent changes announced by T-Mobile include eliminating roaming and international data usage fees, as well as being able to trade in or upgrade their existing phones or devices every six months for only $10 per line.

These risks have paid off allowing T-Mobile to acquire more than 4.4 million new subscribers in 2013, with a significant number of customers switching from AT&T and Sprint.

Author Bio
Jessica is a freelance journalist who loves to cover technology news and the ways that technology makes life easier. She also blogs at FreshlyTechy. Check her out on Twitter @TechyJessy.