T-Mobile continues to raise the stakes against AT&T, Verizon Wireless and Sprint with another improbable promotion that literally gives away an extra line of service for free.

“Today, I’m thanking customers by giving them one of the things they want the most – a way to connect more of their family or more of their devices all the time,” said John Legere, president and CEO of T-Mobile.  “That’s why we’re giving customers a free line to use any way they choose!”

The press release offers customers a variety of options:

Current T-Mobile customers with at least two voice lines can use that extra line however they want. Get an extra line of unlimited T-Mobile ONE. Or if you have Simple Choice, you’ll get an extra Simple Choice line with your same data plan. Or use your free line for a new tablet or smartwatch. Or turn your car into a 4G LTE hotspot and a lot more with SyncUp Drive. It’s your call!

The “2 Unlimited Lines for $100 All In” promotion that began this morning offers new or current customers a chance to score a free extra line of service (after bill credits). The discount continues indefinitely and is also good for customers with more than two lines on their T-Mobile account. Here are the details:

• How do I get the free add a line promotion?
  • Starting March 1st, for a limited time only, anyone activating 2 unlimited lines on T-Mobile ONE, and existing customers with at least 2 voice lines on T-Mobile ONE or Simple Choice can get 1 additional line for FREE after bill credit.
  • All free lines must be activated during the promotional period and you can keep the promotional pricing as long as you maintain qualifying service and line count. Customers may take advantage of this offer in addition to other offers and promotions, including 2/$100 and Carrier Freedom.
• Who’s eligible for this promotion?
  • New customers, current customers and employees are eligible to receive this offer as long as they are on a qualifying rate plan, have two paid voice lines, and an account in good standing.
  • Customers with one voice line will need to migrate to T-Mobile ONE and add a second paid voice line to qualify for the FREE Line. Qualifying new and existing @Work customers may add one additional qualifying line on us for a max of 12 lines total.
• How does the offer work?
  • The free line will match your current paid voice line data, i.e. T-Mobile ONE customers will receive a FREE T-Mobile ONE line and similarly, Simple Choice customers will receive a FREE Simple Choice line.
  • If your lines have varying amounts of data, the free line will match the line with the least amount of data. Existing customers with two paid voice lines get a free line whether you’re adding a smartphone line, tablet line or wearable.
  • In most cases, you will see your free line credit on your first bill. If credit is not applied on the first bill, two credits will appear on the second bill.
  • For customer’s not on the new T-Mobile ONE taxes and fees included plan, taxes/fees may be applied to pre-bill credit price. A maximum of 1 free line can be added per account.
  • If you cancel service on one of your lines within 12 months or migrate to another plan, you will lose the monthly bill credit for the free line.
• Where is this offer available?
  • Anywhere that T-Mobile offers new lines of service, including T-Mobile retail stores nationwide, and authorized postpaid dealers.

Legere

For most customers, signing up with a T-Mobile ONE plan with unlimited phone, texting, and data will offer the best value and simplify the promotion by matching the same kinds of service on all three (or more) lines. This also guarantees your new line will cost absolutely nothing because T-Mobile ONE bundles all taxes and fees into the cost of service, which in this case is free. On similar promotions at other carriers, customers are on the hook for up to $10 a month in taxes, fees, and various surcharges on that “free” line.

You can bring a device to this plan or buy one from T-Mobile. A new SIM card is required, and T-Mobile charges an outrageous $25 to get one through their website or in stores. But many customers report if you call T-Mobile customer service from a T-Mobile phone on 611, a discounted SIM card for 99 cents is usually available if you ask.

T-Mobile has not put an expiration date on the offer. Judging from customer buzz, there is considerably interest in this offer and a lot of disbelief it comes free of charge.

T-Mobile acknowledges there are some billing issues going on at the wireless carrier as it continues to add customers. At present, customers will see a charge for the service followed by a bill credit, which may take up to two bill cycles to appear (but is retroactive back to your signup date.). It appears T-Mobile bills customers for the free line of service several days before a corresponding credit is issued, which has confused some customers being billed for a service and credited for it on the following month’s invoice. But many on autopay say T-Mobile actually deducts the correct amount (with the credit applied) no matter what the bill indicates. Customer service is also on hand to issue on the spot credits for concerned customers, and T-Mobile claims it is working through this billing issue and should have it resolved.

To take advantage of this offer, customers must not have canceled a line after Jan. 1, 2017. T-Mobile wants this offer to encourage customers to add lines, not convert existing lines from one plan to another.

Verizon will invite several thousand customers in 11 cities to participate in a “pre-commercial” beta test of its newly built 5G wireless network during the first half of 2017.

The fixed wireless, home broadband replacement will be provided over a limited coverage area in these cities: Ann Arbor, Atlanta, Bernardsville, N.J., Brockton, Mass., Dallas, Denver, Houston, Miami, Sacramento, Seattle and Washington, D.C.

Verizon’s announcement only generally promotes the future potential of 5G service without being too specific about what it intends to offer. We expect the service will be marketed as a wireless home broadband service, not for those on the go. There is no finalized standard for 5G service yet, so Verizon’s adaptation isn’t necessarily going to be the final standard and could change before the wireless provider expands the service to other customers.

“The 5G systems we are deploying will soon provide wireless broadband service to homes, enabling customers to experience cost-competitive, gigabit speeds that were previously only deliverable via fiber,” said Woojune Kim, vice president, Next Generation Business Team, Samsung Electronics.

Verizon’s ability to offer gigabit speeds will depend on several factors:

• Backhaul connectivity: Verizon will likely choose areas where fiber connectivity is already installed, either as part of its FiOS project or through its fiber connections to cell towers. Because of the very high frequencies involved, 5G connectivity will be line-of-sight and the coverage area will be very limited, within a mile or less of the tower or small cell infrastructure Verizon will depend on to provide service to each neighborhood.
• Distance and signal quality: 5G service will be distance sensitive and fixed wireless will require the installation of an antenna either pointed out a window or installed externally on a building. The further away, the slower the speed.
• Shared network: Total available bandwidth on a 5G tower or small cell is shared among all users connected to it. During the initial beta test, speeds are likely to be very high. That may not stay the case as Verizon adds customers to its service.

Verizon has avoided mentioning specific speed tiers, pricing, whether service is unlimited or usage capped, equipment costs, and contract terms. We are also not aware if the service will be marketed by Verizon Communications, the wireline company that also markets FiOS or Verizon Wireless, the mobile operator side of Verizon.

Several of the test cities represent Verizon’s first home broadband invasion on other providers’ turf. Frontier Communications is likely unhappy to learn it faces direct competition from Verizon in Dallas. Verizon sold its landline and FiOS network in Texas to Frontier. Most of the other test cities seem to avoid direct competition with Charter Communications, as almost all are serviced by Comcast. The new 5G service will also compete directly with AT&T in Michigan, Georgia, Texas, Florida, and California.

CBS earned $1 billion from cable and satellite TV customers in 2016, collected from providers in return for permission to carry CBS stations on their lineups.

“Annual revenue from retransmission consent and reverse compensation has already exceeded $1 billion, a full year ahead of schedule, and continues to grow rapidly,” said CBS CEO Les Moonves in a statement.

Most cable and satellite providers pass along those fees directly to consumers either in the price charged for service or through so-called “Broadcast TV surcharges” that are broken out separately on the bill. CBS has plans to more than double those fees, with a target of collecting $2.5 billion annually by the year 2020. One-third of CBS’ national coverage area will face contract renewal discussions in the next 24 months, leading to higher priced renewals.

Other networks are also expecting similar compensation boosts, and SNL Kagan projected operators would be passing on $10.6 billion in broadcast TV retransmission consent fees within the next three years. That could raise the Broadcast TV surcharge to $10-15 a month in some areas, just to cover fees charged by local ABC, CBS, CW, FOX, MyNetworkTV and NBC stations.

Some of the windfall profits CBS are collecting from retransmission agreements could be spent acquiring more TV stations, if FCC Chairman Ajit Pai loosens TV station ownership limits.

“If the cap is lifted we’d strategically look to buy more stations,” Moonves said.

The average Charter/Spectrum customer shares their internet connection with up to 499 of their neighbors, according to an admission made today by Charter Communications CEO Thomas Rutledge.

“Our average node size is around 500 homes,” Rutledge told investors on a morning conference call.

According to a lawsuit filed by the New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, from about 2012, Spectrum-TWC’s network across New York typically provided about 304Mbps (8 x 38Mbps channels) of bandwidth to be shared among all the subscribers in a service group. In some areas, this would mean that 300 customers in a node would have around 1Mbps of bandwidth to use if all 300 subscribers used the internet at the same time. Time Warner Cable had begun expanding bandwidth on DOCSIS nodes to 16 channels at the time Charter Communications acquired the company, giving customers shared bandwidth of about 608Mbps.

Remarkably, Rutledge’s admission suggests some Charter customers may be serviced by DOCSIS nodes even more populated than the ones in New York State that regularly failed to deliver advertised internet speeds and prompted the Attorney General to file a lawsuit against Charter.

New York’s lawsuit claimed as of February 2016, the average Time Warner Cable customer in the state shared their connection with about 340 other customers. Information obtained from Time Warner Cable found some nodes with as few as 32 subscribers while the most overcongested had as many as 621 subscribers.

Rutledge’s comments this morning suggest Charter/Spectrum customers may be sharing their connection with up to 499 of their neighbors, making them more likely to experience congestion potentially worse than experienced with Time Warner Cable. Standard internet service from Charter is also much faster than Time Warner Cable’s corresponding Standard plan — 60Mbps vs. 15Mbps, which has the potential to lead to even worse slowdowns if customers use their internet connections at the same time.

Rutledge defended the average node size by claiming Charter has a lot of fiber in its network.

“And we have the ability to take that fiber deeper,” Rutledge said. “We have the ability incrementally to take the network to a passive network and to do that at reasonably efficient capital cost through time and to do that in very targeted ways where we need the capacity. So we’re very comfortable with the extensibility of our network and the ability to put high capacity anywhere in our network.”

Rutledge said node expansions take place through a “market demand driven sort of process.”

“There are bunch of ways you can manage capacity on our network,” Rutledge explained. “We can do what are called virtual node splits. If you clear analog spectrum and go all-digital, [that can create] excess capacity in your network, and [if] you have demand to put more capacity in a node, there [are] two ways of doing it. One way is to physically split a node into a smaller node, which requires the placing of an electronic device in the field, and maybe the extension of some fiber. It depends on how the architecture of that is structured, but it’s relatively inexpensive on a grand scale capital perspective, but a lot more expensive than a digital or virtual node split. And you can do those if you have channel capacity by just recreating additional DOCSIS paths to create a virtual node essentially. And so we manage our network for the future based on the actual load on the network as opposed to some theoretical issue.”

Unlimited data is back.

AT&T has followed Verizon Wireless back the era of unlimited data plans, starting tomorrow.

The AT&T Unlimited plan will be available to all customers, not just those signed up with DirecTV, and will be expensive. A single line unlimited voice, text, and data plan will reportedly cost $100 a month. Customers switching four lines to unlimited data will pay $180 after a $40 bill credit kicks in 60 days after signing up. This means for the first two months, customers will pay $220 for the privilege of unlimited data.

The new plan is open to residential and business/corporate accounts and business customers will also get the benefit of any corporate discounts.

AT&T’s definition of “unlimited” actually means 22GB. If you exceed that amount, AT&T reserves the right to slow your data connection “during periods of network congestion.”

The plan includes:

• unlimited calls from the U.S. to Canada and Mexico
• unlimited texts to over 120 countries
• talk, text and use data in Canada and Mexico with no roaming charges when adding the free Roam North America feature
• the ability to switch off AT&T’s “Stream Saver” which limits online video playback to 480p

“We’re always listening to our customers and will continue to evolve to provide more choice, more convenience, and more value,” claims AT&T in a press release. But observers believe AT&T listens to the competitive realities of the marketplace more than its customers who never wanted to lose the option of unlimited data in the first place.