T-Mobile has a full schedule planned for the Sprint network shutdown, and we now have a full timeline of when Sprint customer migration to the T-Mobile billing system will occur.
We previously covered T-Mobile’s “Magenta Complete” program. This is the name T-Mobile has given for the process of automatic migration of Sprint customers to the T-Mobile billing system. Back in October, the program went through a bit of a trial process. As of yesterday, January 6th, the full migration process began.
An internal slide, which was a part of the “Sprint Forward 2022” slideshow and is embedded below, was shared with us here at The T-Mo Report. It details both the Sprint network shutdowns and a timeline of when Sprint customers will be moved to T-Mobile’s billing systems.
Mentioned at the top is “Automated Migration Readiness”. This is essentially the number of Sprint accounts that will be ready to migrate to T-Mobile systems. Then, in January of 2023, a proverbial switch is flipped to actually move those customers over. June 2023 appears to be an absolute final date for any and all accounts to be fully migrated.
The document shows that around 500,000 Sprint customers are set to be ready this month. In July, an estimated 4 million customers will be ready to move over. Finally, in January of 2023, 8 million customers will be ready, and the migration will be initiated. June of 2023 appears to be the absolute last day of the process, and appears to be a sort of buffer zone for stragglers. At that point all Sprint customers will have been migrated to the T-Mobile billing system.
Also shown is confirmation of the Sprint network shutdown dates. CDMA is set to shutdown in March of this year, while Sprint’s LTE network will shut down in June. These are the same dates we’ve known about since October, when T-Mobile not-so-subtly blamed Dish for the delay in CDMA shutdown.
The recent decision to no longer require migration for Sprint Select discounts seems to tie into this. It appears that T-Mobile originally planned to move Sprint customers over by migrating them to T-Mobile plans, thus ensuring they end up on the T-Mobile systems. It seems now they want to make the transition a bit smoother for Sprint customers, and will fully move existing Sprint plans to the T-Mobile systems instead. This includes even the special discounted plans many customers are fond of, like SWAC and corporate discount plans.
Long story short, T-Mobile is making the migration of Sprint customers as painless as possible. Customers still on Sprint plans simply need to make sure they’re on a compatible device (and SIM), and if they’re not, look into a Sprint Select offer. After that, they can simply sit back and wait for the migration to happen, with no plan changes or price changes whatsoever. That being said, if you’re still on a legacy Sprint plan, you may want to double check and make sure that a newer T-Mobile plan wouldn’t be cheaper.
