Multiple major announcements from US Mobile

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View: https://www.reddit.com/r/USMobile/comments/1w1kuvb/the_big_beautiful_update_11_million_customers_1b/?solution=f8d4dafeb0235ffdf8d4dafeb0235ffd&js_challenge=1&jsc_token=2824be10929bdc604753c70a67a1c331a05e87030efc5d8b2804a1d5675de1b7&jsc_orig_r=&solution=d4bccb855fcf0796d4bccb855fcf0796&js_challenge=1&jsc_token=2824be10929bdc604753c70a67a1c33137f0382032f253ed32a72eeb3669c387&jsc_orig_r=

 

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The $1 billion Warp deal

As some of you saw on my LinkedIn, we extended our agreement for the network that powers Warp well into the next decade, and the agreement is now officially worth over $1 billion. Our first agreement was worth under $2 million, at a time when other companies in the space already had network commitments worth hundreds of millions of dollars. You can imagine what that meant for us commercially. At one point, our base MDN line fee on one of our networks was literally $4 per line per month before you even used the network. We took those economics because we knew we were building something special, and we believed that if we could get enough customers, build the right technology and earn enough trust, eventually scale would start working for us instead of against us. Now it does.

A billion dollar agreement is also pretty much the opposite of getting acquired. It is a long deal and a big deal precisely because we intend to remain independent. Now, that does not mean we do not have a number. It is $20 billion You are welcome to laugh. Michael and I laughed when we told our bankers too, although worryingly they did not laugh, so we'll see. In practical terms, it is a number big enough to keep almost everyone away from us.

And remember, this is just Warp. You will likely see us announce some very large renewals across our other network relationships too, potentially taking our total network commitments north of $2 billion. When our first agreement was under $2 million and we are now talking about commitments in the billions, it is hard not to stop for a second and appreciate how far this has come. More importantly, scale gives us access to technology, economics and network capabilities that we simply could not get when we were tiny. So now that that's out of the way, let's talk about what all of this actually means for you.

Warp: 5G Standalone and a completely new core

Our 5G Standalone work on Warp is ready. We are targeting the rollout on physical SIMs in October, followed by eSIM by the end of Q4. I am very excited about 5G SA, but underneath it there is actually something even more important happening. We are moving onto the new 5G Core, and this fundamentally changes how programmable the network becomes for us.

Today, there are all sorts of different constructs underneath different plans and device types. With the new core, one rate plan can cover 4G, 5G NSA and 5G SA devices, phones and tablets can start converging onto the same architecture, and we expect to ultimately cut the number of underlying rate plans we maintain by roughly half. More importantly, things become real time. You buy a top up, change a plan or add a speed boost and it can apply immediately while your phone is actively connected, without requiring you to restart the device or wonder why something you just paid for has not shown up yet.

The new core also lets us build products that we simply could not build properly before. We can go down to allowances measured in megabytes instead of gigabytes, build much more flexible top ups, create metered voice products, send much more granular usage notifications and even build things like time based speed passes, where you could buy full speed for a period of time rather than buying another bucket of data. A lot of this is deeply nerdy, but the big picture is simple: Warp is becoming dramatically more programmable over the next few quarters.

Unlimited Starter gets better on both Warp and Lightspeed

Unlimited Starter is going uncapped on both Warp and Lightspeed.

On Warp, we are also officially grandfathering all of you currently on Unlimited Starter onto QCI 8 for life as of today. If you check your line, you are already on it.

Anyone who signs up for Starter through the end of September will also get QCI 8 grandfathered for life. After September, we will likely introduce priority as roughly a $5 add on for new Starter customers.

People abusing uncapped plans worries me a little bit, and what worries me more is when someone abuses something, gets caught and then comes to Reddit and is not exactly truthful about what happened But it's okay. We'll deal with it together. I would rather build generous products and figure out abuse than build mediocre products because I am scared of a tiny percentage of people.