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T-Mobile CEO John Legere talks LTE and fees at Carrier 4.0 event (pictures)

T-Mobile announced plans for better LTE coverage and a new service that will pay you to end your contract early with another carrier at its keynote during CES 2014

Sarah Mitroff
Sarah Mitroff is a Managing Editor for CNET, overseeing our health, fitness and wellness section. Throughout her career, she's written about mobile tech, consumer tech, business and startups for Wired, MacWorld, PCWorld, and VentureBeat.
Sarah Mitroff
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CEO John Legere takes the stage

LAS VEGAS -- T-Mobile's animated -- and occasionally foul-mouthed -- CEO John Legere started off the mobile company's Carrier 4.0 event by talking about getting kicked out of AT&T's CES party earlier in the week. The incident went viral, and Legere recounted his experience. He even gave CNET News Editor Roger Cheng repeated shout-outs during his presentation for his role in the incident.
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Red Bull in hand

Legere drank a Red Bull as he gave his opening remarks to the crowd.
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Fastest LTE

The CEO boasted that his company has the fastest LTE data signals of all the mobile carriers, citing Speedtest.net, a site that tests your Internet and mobile data speeds.
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Customer growth

One of the big news points from the event was that T-Mobile added 4.4 million net new customers in 2013. Here Legere talks about T-Mobile being the fast-growing carrier in the US and notes that the company added more phone customers than everyone else combined in the third quarter of 2013.
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CTO Neville Ray

T-Mobile's network expert and CTO Neville Ray talks about T-Mobile data speeds, pointing out other carrier's slower speeds. According to T-Mobile, its LTE network's average download speed in December 2013 was 17.8 Mbps, versus 14.7 Mbps from AT&T.
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LTE Wideband

Ray introduces T-Mobile LTE Wideband, an expanded LTE spectrum meant to reach more customers and offer faster speeds. All existing LTE-capable T-Mobile devices can use Wideband LTE.
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Cease & desist

Legere said that now that he's proven his carrier's network speeds are the fastest, he's sending a cease & desist letter to AT&T to tell them to stop making that same claim. "Think of all the billboards they'll have to take down," jokes Legere.
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No ETFs

Early termination fees apply when you want to end your contract with a cell phone carrier before it's expired. T-Mobile doesn't have ETFs, and it doesn't think anyone else should either. "The ETF circle is part of the industry scam, with little transparency," says Legere.
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Paying your ETF

Confirming a few rumors, T-Mobile announces a new program where it will pay anyone's ETF if they come to the carrier and trade in their old device.
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Leave now, go back later

Legere encourages everyone to break their current contract and come to T-Mobile. "If it doesn't work, AT&T will pay you to come back," he says.
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CMO Mike Sievert

CMO Mike Sievert explains the ETF program. T-Mobile will pay up $350 of ETFs per line, on up to five lines. Additionally, when you trade in a phone, you'll get up to $300 as a trade-in credit. All told, you could get up to $650 for switching.

T-Mobile is also offering all of its top smartphones for zero dollars down for qualified customers, meaning those with good credit. You'll still have to make monthly payments on the new device, per T-Mobile's payment plans.

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Break-up letter

Ready to kick your old carrier to the curb? T-Mobile put up a Web site where you can fill out a breakup letter to send to your carrier, complete with the reason why you're leaving.
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One last shot

Legere kept the crowd entertained with his -- to put it lightly -- blunt observations about other mobile carriers. He and other T-Mobile execs wrapped the show with some Q&A time.

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