T-Mobile confirms big retail expansion plans to Best Buy and Walmart, as well as for its Metro brand
Mere hours after Verizon detailed a long-term 5G rollout and expansion strategy that's somehow both overly ambitious and unlikely to give T-Mobile a run for its money, the nation's second-largest wireless service provider (by subscribers) stole back the limelight by outlining its own "supercharged" plan to further extend an already comfortable lead "throughout the 5G era."
While Magenta unsurprisingly focused primarily on highlighting its bold 5G network availability and speed objectives for 2023 and beyond in its virtual Analyst Day presentation, there were also a couple of other major announcements made yesterday that require a moment of your time.
In line with rumors from around a month ago, which expanded on older gossip that partially materialized last summer, T-Mo is officially gearing up for a "significant expansion" of its "addressable markets." This will require a "multi-pronged" approach aimed at boosting subscriber numbers by coming closer to potential customers in smaller markets and rural areas.
In addition to building and opening "hundreds" of new stores of its own over the next five years, including more than 200 such retail locations in 2021 alone, T-Mobile will finally join forces with both Best Buy and Walmart... sometime soon. Of the 2,200+ Walmart stores currently preparing to carry "T-Mobile products", nearly 1,000 will be located in "rural America", opening the brand to exciting new opportunities to steal business from Verizon and AT&T where value matters most.
T-Mo expects to enter close to 1,000 Best Buy brick and mortar stores too before long while also preparing a major expansion for its prepaid Metro sub-brand. Metro by T-Mobile products, which are currently available only in... Metro by T-Mobile stores will soon spread their wings to existing T-Mobile retail locations in "rural America."
On top of everything, Magenta aims to open no less than 500 new Metro by T-Mobile branded and "multi-carrier" stores by the end of this year in an aggressive attempt to "reach new consumers" who might be interested in ultra-affordable handsets like the hugely popular OnePlus Nord N10 5G and N100, as well as dirt-cheap prepaid plans starting at $50 a month per line with unlimited high-speed data and access to T-Mo's low and mid-band 5G signals included.
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