Laptop Magazine just made T-Mobile one of their “Game Changers” for 2013 for its Un-Carrier campaign. I spoke with the author of the piece on T-Mobile and emphasized some of what I perceive as the risks around the campaign, but many of my thoughts didn’t make it into the piece, so I thought I’d share them here.

The concerns I have with T-Mobile’s Un-Carrier strategy are two-fold:

• Though there are one or two truly disruptive things in T-Mobile’s new approach, much of what they’re doing boils down to discounting
• Though some of their early moves took advantage of the flexibility in accounting afforded to owners of networks, the more recent ones are taking real risks with inflexible third-party costs.

I’ll take each of these in turn. Continue reading →