T-Mobile shelled out $325 million for Layer 3, which at the time had just 5,000 paying customers.
#Netflix on t mobile tv#
T-Mobile's most puzzling foray into media to date has been its late 2017 acquisition of Layer 3, a small pay TV service that set out to reinvent the cable experience without changing the industry's core business model. Since then, the carrier's "Netflix on Us" promotion features a hodge-podge of different plans and options, including a free standard-definition tier, and an option to pay $2 out of pocket to stream in HD. Things got a little more complicated when Netflix decided to raise its prices in 2019, and T-Mobile wasn't willing to cough up the difference. Back then, the team-up was widely seen as disruptive, as it promised eligible T-Mobile customers free access to Netflix's HD plan, priced $10 per month at the time. The telco's Quibi partnership was modeled after its promotional deal with Netflix, which first launched in 2017. Consumers also had to seek out the deal and activate it through T-Mobile's app, adding further friction. That's in part because the promotion, which promised T-Mobile customers free access to Qubi's $4.99 subscription tier, was only available to a subset of consumers who had two or more lines with the carrier. However, it's safe to say that T-Mobile did not deliver 68 million customers to Quibi. "We're gonna bring it to our 68 million customers."įinancial details of the partnership were never disclosed. Millions that Sievers promised to deliver through a bundled partnership, complete with in-store promotions. Quibi's execs on the other hand contended that the typical YouTube and TikTok fare wasn't good enough, and that a combination of recognized talent and big budgets would be able to win over millions of viewers.
Quibi critics have long argued that this was essentially an argument against the service: Consumers were already busy watching clips for free, and there was little reason for them to pay for a premium version, walled off from the social networks that have become a daily habit for Quibi's target audience. Video, Sievert told the crowd, was already responsible for more than half of the data consumption on T-Mobile's network, and 80% of the video viewed by its customers was short-form content from services like YouTube and TikTok. "Quibi's the next big thing, and we're delighted to be a part of it," Sievert told a few dozen journalists and industry insiders.
#Netflix on t mobile full#
When incoming T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert joined Quibi executives on stage at CES this year, he was full of praise about the mobile video service.