(whooshing)
- Hey everyone, Mike Sievert here.
As you can likely tell, I'm coming to you from my home
just outside of Seattle, Washington.
And I'm here with some really exciting news to share.
I'm proud to announce that Connecting Heroes,
our breakthrough initiative for first responders,
is now live nationwide.
As a reminder, Connecting Heroes is the name
for T-Mobile's unprecedented 10-year commitment
to provide completely free mobile service
to every single first responder in this country
who works at public and non-profit, state and local
police, fire, and EMT services
so they can have the critical technology they need
to keep us safe.
That means that starting today every single
first responder agency across the country can sign up
for that free wireless service with unlimited talk,
text, and smartphone data, including free 5G access,
for all of their first responder employees.
And I really hope they do because if every agency
across this country signs up, that'll put
about 7.7 billion dollars back into their budgets
over the next 10 years, which is exactly
what Connecting Heroes is all about because today
our first responder agencies face budget shortfalls
year after year after year.
The last time anybody did a comprehensive study,
they found that first responders face
up to a 100 billion dollar budget shortfall.
And that's likely getting worse in today's climate,
which can impact first responders.
Many agencies are forced to make trade-offs
between life-saving equipment such as personal
protective equipment and important communication services
like wireless that they depend on to do their jobs.
And that's just not right.
That's an example of a choice that they shouldn't ever
have to make and certainly not now in the midst
of a global pandemic.
So T-Mobile is doing something about it.
With Connecting Heroes, first responder agencies
can save billions over the next 10 years,
billions that they can now put towards equipment
and training, extra pay and more support for these heroes.
This is not some temporary promotion and it's not just
for the duration of the COVID crisis.
This is our commitment for the next decade, free service
for every state and local, non-profit and public
first responder agency, on us, no strings attached.
This is an example of what we meant when we said
that we had plans to use 5G for good last fall.
For the last two years, we worked to win approval
for the T-Mobile-Sprint merger and combine our businesses.
And we made some important commitments to consumers
along the way, commitments about our network
and about our plans to put all this new capacity to work.
Now, there've been some skeptics along the way,
people who said we wouldn't deliver,
that we would never follow through.
But they were wrong.
I understand their initial concern.
Some companies don't fulfill on their commitments,
like AT&T, for example.
They said they wouldn't raise prices
after buying Time Warner and it took them about a matter
of days to break that promise.
The Uncarrier is just different.
And that's why I'm so proud of today's news
and so proud to share the incredible work
this company is doing to show the world
time and time again that at T-Mobile,
when we make a commitment, we make it happen.
We said we'd launch T-Mobile Connect, our lowest-price
smartphone plan ever, to help people
on the tightest budgets.
We not only did that, we did it early because we saw
that people needed it now more than ever before,
a move that already forced AT&T to introduce
their own lower-cost plans, which means prices
for wireless customers across the industry are going down,
once again because of T-Mobile.
And we said we'd create new jobs.
And just in the past few days, we unveiled plans
to hire 5,000 new people in the next year.
And we said we'd launch Connecting Heroes.
And that happens starting today.
We also said we'd improve coverage for Sprint customers.
And we're already doing it.
We said we'd build 5G for all.
And we already cover more Americans with 5G than anyone.
In fact, our 5G network is eight times bigger than AT&T's
and get this, 28,000 times bigger than Verizon's.
Earlier this month, we lit up 5G in San Francisco
and today we're live in Sacramento with new sites
lighting up across Tampa and Orlando too.
In a few years, we'll have 14 times the capacity
of T-Mobile standalone and we'll cover 99% of Americans
with blazing fast 5G.
The reality is that Connecting Heroes is possible
because of all of that capacity, the incredible
5G network that'll be unleashed from our merger with Sprint.
When we were planning this Un-carrier Move, we sat down
and took a good look at the state of this industry
and how wireless companies have treated first responders.
And we didn't like what we saw.
Verizon spends millions of dollars marketing their service
to first responders with Superbowl ads and hashtags
and social campaigns.
And you know, AT&T's no better.
It just didn't sit right with us,
especially when these agencies face
enormous budget pressures.
And they need wireless to be most effective in their jobs.
These brave men and women are putting their lives
on the line for us day in and day out.
And they're being treated like just another group
to be segmented and marketed to and monetized.
These are people who deserve our best and the carriers
are just not getting it.
So enough's enough.
We're not gonna sell to our nation's first responders.
We're gonna serve them for free.
T-Mobile's solving another wireless industry
pain point and for some of the most deserving
people among us.
Now, we all know the world's changed since we announced
Connecting Heroes last November and we're living
in some pretty unusual times.
So many people have been asked to step up
and support our country.
So I wanna say thank you to all of the essential workers
across our country right now who are helping us
get through this crisis, the teachers, medical workers,
food workers, cleaners, drivers, and of course
T-Mobile's own employees who are connecting us all.
These people are doing incredible things every day.
And I just wanna say thank you to everyone out there
who's doing your part by drastically changing the way
you work, the way you live, to help us navigate
through these trying times.
So we're gonna say thank you the Un-carrier way.
I'm announcing today, in appreciation of all those
keeping our country going, that the awesome new
iPhone SE is on us for free this Memorial Day weekend.
All the details are on t-mobile.com.
So on behalf of everyone at T-Mobile, to all the workers
out there on the job, to all the parents staying home
and to everybody else all across the country
doing your part, thank you.
And today in particular we're celebrating
our nation's first responders.
And I want all of you to know we're with you.
Thanks, everybody.
(digital chirping)