T-Mobile US offers to pay early termination fees for switchers as it claims fastest LTE network

T-Mobile USA announced on Wednesday the next phase of the operator’s “Uncarrier” business model with a bold offer to pay customer’s early termination fees when switching from competing carriers AT&T, Sprint and Verizon.

T-Mobile says it will pay up to $350 in fees per line for up to five lines and pay up to $300 extra for trade-ins of subsidized devices. The offer isn’t a promotion, as T-Mobile plans to make this a permanent. Word of T-Mobile’s plan leaked out earlier this week.

“What we are going to do is force the industry to get healthier. I want every customer to have constant complete choice,” T-Mobile CEO John Legere said.

If you’re looking for a cheeky way to leave your existing carrier, T-Mobile has created a break-up letter template for you to send.

The <3 of EU tech

The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!

The carrier kicked off its Uncarrier initiative last March with its Simple Choice unlimited plan. Last July, it introduced the Jump upgrade plan for customers. In October, T-Mobile announced free international data and free tablet data for life.

At its CES press event, T-Mobile continued its “Catch Jeremy” advertising campaign with a video of Legere dropping off a $74,787 giant check from T-Mobile at an AT&T store to pay for Jeremy’s overseas data usage.

T-Mobile also touted its 4G LTE network as the fastest in the country with a reach of 209 million people in 273 metro areas. The claim is based on millions of points of crowdsourced real-time data from Speedtest.net. nIn the month of December, T-Mobile’s Speedtest average was 17.8 Mbps, compared to 14.7 Mbps from AT&T, 14.3 Mbps from Verizon and 7.9 Mbps from Sprint.

“What we have now is a no-apology network,” Legere said, adding that it’s only going to get better.

The firm is also launching its 20+20MHz LTE Wideband LTE service, starting in Dallas with peak download speeds of 147Mbps. New devices coming to T-Mobile include the LG G Flex, Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 and the Sony Xperia Z1s.

Legere revealed that T-Mobile had 869,000 postpaid net customer additions in the fourth quarter of 2013, making it the best quarter in eight years. For the whole year, the company had 4.4 million net new customers.