T-Mobile on Monday announced a new marketing tactic, the "Wireless Customer Bill of Rights," which it plans to wield against its main rivals in the U.S. carrier market.
The document pushes policies that are already in place at T-Mobile, including free international data roaming and a moratorium on overage fees. The carrier is asking people to share the document with AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint via Twitter, or even print it out and take it to one of those companies' retail outlets.
A more elaborate Twitter-based campaign asks people to use the hashtag "#TweetJohn" to receive an emoji of T-Mobile CEO John Legere. If the emoji is used over 500,000 times by March 31, the carrier says it will use magenta chalk to write every post outside of high-traffic AT&T and Verizon stores around the U.S.
The promotion is intended to mark the third anniversary of T-Mobile's "Un-carrier" strategy. This positions the carrier as a "rebel" in the American cellular industry, and indeed some policies have actually forced its competitors to adapt, for example by all but eliminating once-standard two-year contracts.
The company has encountered flak, however, for some of its tactics. One of these is "Binge On," a perk -- enabled by default -- which lets subscribers stream video from participating services without it affecting their data caps. That video is degraded to 480p though, and at one point it was discovered that the company is throttling all video, regardless of whether the source is a partner company.
T-Mobile is working to fix that situation, but could still have to face concerns that Binge On violates the Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality rules. These state that Internet service providers can't degrade traffic on the basis of content, app, or service.