T-Mobile surpassed 30M mark in total subscribers by adding almost 1 million subscribers in the last quarter itself.

T-Mobile USA amassed 981,000 net additions in the first three months, three quarters of which were post-pay customers. Another 1.1 million subscribers were added when its purchase of SunCom was consolidated on February 22. T-Mobile USA currently has a total of 30.8 million subscribers. The calling plan MyFaves was doing especially well in the US, with 5.5 million customers at the end of the quarter. SMS and MMS usage was also up from the same quarter last year, with 33 billion messages sent in Q1 2008

Earnings: Deutsche Telekom First Quarter Stable; T-Mobile Hit By Currency Declines - washingtonpost.com

It may not be a huge difference to Cell phone users, but Google hopes Android brings a better phone and exciting applications in the future. I doubt these phones initially would even be any closer to other devices in terms of functionality and intuitive interfaces that we all have been used to.

T-Mobile USA has revealed it is preparing to ship out its first mobile phones built on Google Android platform later this year.

Read the news article here T-Mobile confirms Android handsets this year

Ryan of 37 Signals shared his recent experience with T-Mobile customer service that’s so wonderful and quite unbelievable to me. Instead of waiting for about 20 minutes on the line to talk to an agent, T-Mobile’s calling back the customer when they are ready is an excellent strategy of really caring about customer. I hope its not an exception but something every customer experiences with T-Mobile. 

The other two strategies, giving a specific date for resolution and automatically communicating customer once the problem is fixed are just excellent.

1. I never had to stand in line
Waiting on hold sucks. T-Mobile knows it so they gave me another option and called me back.

2. The agent cared about my problem
The girl on the line was kind, attentive, and apologetic. She made me feel like it was their problem and their responsibility. Which is exactly what I want as a customer. She also promised an update by a specific date, which eased my uncertainty.

3. When the problem was fixed, I heard it from them first
I received a text message as soon as my service was restored. That little victory SMS taught me that when they have downtime in the future, I can trust they will work quickly and notify me when it’s fixed. It’s so frustrating to repeatedly pick up the phone every half hour to see if it works. Thanks to their communication, next time I can relax and wait for the good news.

Kudos to T-Mobile for the good example.

Lessons from T-Mobile’s support - (37signals)

Its a total waste of customer’s time to wait on phone line for about 20 minutes every time they call to get to the agent. Thankfully, at least one company understands it. Hope they really mean it (so many others praised T-Mobile for its excellent service in the comments section of the above blog post) and other companies follow the suit.