Over the last year and a half, T-Mobile has lured millions of customers to its network with the help of giveaways, like unlimited music streaming and free international roaming.
On Wednesday, T-Mobile said it was giving away more features, this time related to Wi-Fi.
The company said it had teamed up with Gogo, a provider of in-flight Wi-Fi, to offer T-Mobile subscribers free access to texting and voicemail service on airplanes equipped with Gogo’s service. Users will receive the messages and voicemail over the Wi-Fi connection. (Many modern messaging and voicemail services, like the iPhone’s iMessage and visual voicemail, rely on an Internet data connection rather than the traditional cellular network.)
It also said its customers could get a free base station that plugs into a broadband Internet connection to create a miniature cell tower inside their homes, which will help improve service in areas with spotty coverage. Customers first have to put down a $25 deposit for the device, and once they are done using it or do not want it anymore, they get the money back.
T-Mobile also said it would be the first carrier to support Wi-Fi calls, a new feature in Apple’s coming iPhone 6. It allows users to place high-quality phone calls with each other over a Wi-Fi connection. That could help in areas where phone calls made over the cellular network drop frequently.
T-Mobile executives said in an interview that the Wi-Fi offerings benefited the company by attracting more subscribers to its network. But it also lets the company offload some of the traffic from its cellular network onto Wi-Fi services, which helps free up some congestion.
“Is there any question that having Wi-Fi networks everywhere and the cellular network combined is better than either one of them alone?” John Legere, T-Mobile’s chief executive, said in an interview.