T-Mobile Launching Home Internet Pilot

T-Mobile, eager to land regulatory approval of its Sprint buy, said Thursday it’s launching a pilot to help close the digital divide: a Home Internet program available to up to 50,000 existing customers, by invitation and by year-end. It expects speeds of “around” 50 Mbps with fixed unlimited wireless service over LTE, with no data caps. The $50 monthly service will be launched in rural and underserved areas, T-Mobile said. “LTE network and spectrum capacity constraints” limit the program's size, the carrier said: “But if T-Mobile’s pending merger with Sprint is approved, with the added scale and capacity of the New T-Mobile, the Un-carrier plans to cover more than half of U.S. households with 5G broadband service -- in excess of 100 Mbps -- by 2024.” New Street’s Jonathan Chaplin told investors Thursday if the Sprint buy doesn’t go through, T-Mobile may have to increase prices. “If the Sprint acquisition is approved, we would expect them to deploy Sprint’s spectrum and use the increased capacity to take share,” Chaplin wrote. “If the acquisition is blocked, they will have a choice between increasing capacity by some other means or increasing price to slow subscriber and usage growth. Increasing capacity would be their first choice, but this may not be possible, at least not initially, making higher prices necessary.”