So how is T-Mobile’s long-awaited “Uncarrier” revolution of pay TV service going a little more than 60 days after launch?
Meh.
“It’s neither a massive cost center or a massive profit center,” said T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert, speaking Wednesday at the Citi 2021 Global TMT West Conference.
The virtual pay TV service, branded TVision, is fulfilling its role as an option for T-Mobile to offer TV service to customers who purchase 5G fixed broadband service. For now, it remains confined to T-Mobile customers, as well as those belonging to recent acquisition Sprint.
Sievert, along with T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray, spent the bulk of Wednesday’s discussion focused on 5G rollout and wireless customer growth initiatives.
Absolutely no tidbits were offered in terms of TVision customer growth or usage.
TVision offers three traditional-looking mid-range vMVPD bundles, starting at $40 a month, along with a somewhat revolutionary $10-a-month bundle featuring a smattering of popular entertainment networks. Almost immediately following its launch of the service at the beginning of November, T-Mobile was challenged by its program licensing partners, namely ViacomCBS and Discovery, for its method of dividing channels among its tiers.
Some didn’t like the way they were confined to the $10-a-month tier.
T-Mobile’s answer was to offer any customer signing up for the three bigger “Live TV” tiers access to the cheaper, super-skinny “Vibe” channels.
The question is, how much did this undermine the TVision business model?
