- Analysts praised T-Mobile's Starlink free beta trial offer for Verizon and AT&T customers
- T-Mobile is clearly relishing its time-to-market advantage in the satellite messaging wars
- The down side? It could backfire on T-Mo once the free trial for customers ends
Go big or go home. That’s the mantra behind T-Mobile’s Super Bowl 2025 ad inviting customers of rival carriers to try out its T-Mobile Starlink texting service for free.
Forget that we’ve known about T-Mobile’s deal with Starlink for over two years now. Nevermind that rivals AT&T and Verizon are pursuing their own direct-to-device (D2D) satellite services. T-Mobile’s first-to-market advantage and bold, in-your-face marketing are getting all the glory.
“T-Mobile did this to cause maximum disruption and to get access to other carriers’ customers in a legal way and in a qualified way,” said long-time wireless industry analyst and Recon Analytics founder Roger Entner. “It’s pretty smart.”
New Street Research financial analyst Jonathan Chaplin said it’s the first marketing innovation along the lines of the earlier “un-carrier” moves that we’ve seen in years.
“It works as a marketing stunt,” Chaplin wrote in a note for investors after the Super Bowl commercial aired on Sunday. “It will remind consumers that T-Mobile … still has some sass. Customers of Verizon and AT&T will be prompted to ask ‘what have you done for me lately?’”
T-Mobile’s Super Bowl ad also scored points as the most engaging. EDO ranked Sunday’s ads based on how effective they were in driving consumer behaviors, such as website visits and brand searches. T-Mobile’s “You’re Connected” ad grabbed the No. 1 spot for generating 12.6 times as much engagement as the median Super Bowl LIX ad, putting it one notch ahead of the RAM commercial starring (one of our fave actors) Glen Powell.
T-Mobile’s ad ended with a directive to go to the T-Mobile website to sign up for the beta – which is free until July – and it only takes a few seconds. That’s where the marketing shrewdness comes in: T-Mobile creates a list of leads of well-qualified potential customers and it knows exactly how to reach them.
When signing up for the beta, the consumer serves up their phone number and agrees to receive offers – ostensibly via email and text, said 556 Ventures principal analyst Bill Ho.
“This is a good switcher lead generation since T-Mobile’s beta period is free,” Ho told Fierce. “With their phone number, T-Mobile knows which carrier the prospective customer is on. Beyond the beta period and if non-T-Mobile customers stay on this service, these people are growth subscribers providing recurring revenue.”
Name your price
T-Mobile is also finding out how much consumers are willing to pay for a service they can essentially get for free via Apple’s Emergency SOS text service powered by Globalstar. Granted, T-Mobile's service eventually will be more robust, but until now, carriers haven't typically charged for a D2D service.
T-Mobile will provide T-Mobile Starlink service for no extra cost on its Go5G Next plans, which start at $85/month for one line. T-Mobile customers on other plans can add the service for $15/month per line (or $10 per line for beta-stage adoptees). Verizon and AT&T customers can get T-Mobile Starlink text messaging for free until July, then pay $20/month per line.
Entner’s firm conducted a survey of more than 6,000 respondents and found that roughly one-third say they’re willing to pay for a satellite D2D service, although he cautions there can be a wide gap between what people say they would do versus what they actually end up doing. More than one in five consumers who want satellite-based communication said they would be willing to switch providers for it.
What they want most from a D2D service is access to text messaging, followed by connecting to the internet and voice calls – primarily when doing outdoor activities like hiking or to simply getting access (when outside, with a direct line of sight to the sky) in dead zones that aren’t covered by terrestrial networks.
“They want to call. They want to text. They want to use this for streaming,” Entner said.
The eventual promise of satellite is that it can do everything terrestrial cellular service can. But that’s where the risk comes in.
If people think they can do everything – like send multimedia messages with photos and video – and they can’t, they’re going to be sorely disappointed. The TV commercial that ran during the Super Bowl gave the impression these things could be done, but they’re in the future – T-Mobile’s D2D service starts with just texting. Picture messaging, data and voice calls are “coming later,” according to T-Mobile.
If consumers expect the moon and they’re only getting a slice, they may very well remember when it comes time to renew service or recommend a carrier. As mobile carriers know all too well, perceptions stick for a long time.
For example, “Verizon gets positive scores for network and negative ones for price when we know that the difference between them and other networks isn’t as big as it used to be and that they have become a lot more affordable,” Entner said.
On the other hand, “T-Mobile continues to get dinged for network and it got a lot better. They get a positive halo for price, and they have now become the most expensive on one and two lines,” he said. “All of these things linger.”
The not-so-flattering coverage gaps
T-Mobile’s already getting some flack from customers who feel they’re getting ripped off.
“T-Mo is charging even its own customers at least $10 per month after July. That basically means T-Mobile is charging extra because it has huge coverage gaps despite licensing its spectrum exclusively and nationwide,” said Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future program at the consumer advocacy group Open Technology Institute at New America.
“Perhaps T-Mobile’s next step will be to decommission half of their cell towers in rural areas, so that they can make even more money charging consumers extra for texting in areas where they haven’t deployed or have weak signals,” Calabrese told Fierce. “They also don’t seem to disclose that Apple is offering the same two-way texting service free indefinitely on its latest iPhone."
But there’s no denying that T-Mobile’s time-to-market advantage is huge. Verizon currently offers a free but limited-in-scope satellite messaging service via its partnership with Skylo, and that’s for select Android devices. Both Verizon and AT&T are investors in AST SpaceMobile, which has launched five satellites so far and last month received Special Temporary Authority (STA) to test services over the United States. It’s still in the early stages.
By comparison, the T-Mobile Starlink service is powered by more than 450 satellites in low-Earth orbit (LEO), with more being added with every successful Starlink launch, according to a T-Mobile spokesperson.
If excitement grows in the T-Mobile user base, early adopters, at a minimum, will feed into its average revenue per unit (ARPU)/average revenue per account (ARPA) metrics with their $10/monthly fees, Ho noted. These kinds of fees are a welcome addition for the carriers struggling to reap returns on their 5G investments.
“It will be interesting to see if AT&T and Verizon launch with similar pricing,” Chaplin concluded. “We suspect they will.”