T-Mobile announced that it will rebrand its prepaid service, MetroPCS, as “Metro by T-Mobile” in an attempt to tell customers that the brand is powered by T-Mobile’s network.
In conjunction with the rebranding effort, T-Mobile’s prepaid service will also refresh its pricing options to include Google One cloud storage services and an Amazon Prime account with its $60-per-month unlimited option.
Tom Keys, president of Metro by T-Mobile, said the rebranding is an attempt to separate the old MetroPCS brand—which only offered CDMA service in roughly a dozen U.S. cities before T-Mobile acquired it in 2013—from the new brand, which piggybacks on T-Mobile’s LTE network.
Importantly, Keys said T-Mobile initiated its MetroPCS rebranding effort roughly a year ago—prior to the April merger agreement between Sprint and T-Mobile—and that the rebranding will move forward regardless of whether the merger is successful. Regulators are currently reviewing the Sprint and T-Mobile merger proposal, and the companies hope to consummate the transaction early next year.
The “Metro by T-Mobile” push will kick off with a new “That’s Genius!” marketing campaign, though Keys said the advertising efforts won’t increase MetroPCS’ existing marketing spending. He also said the company’s dealers likely will appreciate the change because “they get a story that’s more transparent to the customer.”
“We had no network attribution in our brand,” Keys said, acknowledging that MetroPCS has suffered from that situation for years.
Nonetheless, MetroPCS appears to have flourished following its acquisition by T-Mobile in 2013. The brand’s customer base has grown from around 8 million in 2013 to fully 18 million today, likely due to the fact that T-Mobile is selling the brand nationwide (instead of in a handful of cities) across 10,000 retail locations.
Prior to its purchase of MetroPCS, T-Mobile operated the GoSmart prepaid brand, but the company sold that brand and the Walmart Family Mobile brand to TracFone.