Metro PCS 2009 Annual Report Download - page 23

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Distribution and Marketing
We offer our products and services to our customers under the MetroPCS® brand both indirectly through
independent retail outlets and directly through Company-operated retail stores. We also sell our services over the
Internet using our own branded MetroPCS® website. Our indirect distribution outlets include a mixture of local,
regional and national mass market dealers and retailers and specialty stores. Many of our dealers own and operate
more than one location and may operate in more than one of our metropolitan areas. A substantial number of our
retailers, dealers and corporate store locations also accept payment for our services and many also perform other
services for us. A significant portion of our gross customer additions have been added through our indirect
distribution outlets. For the twelve months ended December 31, 2009, approximately 90% of our gross customer
additions were through indirect channels.
Our marketing strategy is to create and provide products, services and communications that drive growth while
optimizing our marketing return on investment and minimizing the cost to acquire customers. Our marketing
campaigns emphasize that MetroPCS offers affordable, predictable and flexible unlimited service plans. MetroPCS
builds consumer awareness and promotes the MetroPCS brand by strategic local advertising to develop our brand
and support our indirect and direct distribution channels. We advertise primarily through local radio, cable,
television, outdoor and local print media. In addition, we believe we have benefited from a significant number of
word-of-mouth customer referrals.
Customer Care, Billing and Support Systems
We outsource some or all of our customer care, billing, payment processing and logistics to nationally recognized
third-party providers.
Our outsourced call centers are staffed with professional and bilingual customer service personnel, who are
available to assist our customers 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Some of these outsourced call centers are located
outside the United States, in Mexico, Antigua, Panama, and the Philippines, which facilitates the efficient provision
of customer support to our large and growing subscriber base, including Spanish speaking customers. We also
provide automated voice response service to assist our customers with routine information requests.
Network Operations
We and Royal Street operate 1xRTT CDMA networks in all of the metropolitan areas where we have launched
service and we have announced plans to upgrade our networks in certain metropolitan areas to LTE. A network
includes a mobile switching center (for CDMA) or enhanced packet core (for LTE) which serves several purposes,
including routing traffic, managing call handoffs, managing access to the public switched telephone network and
providing access to voicemail and other value-added services, base stations (for CDMA) or eNodeBs (for LTE), cell
sites or distributed antenna system, or DAS, nodes, and backhaul facilities, which carry traffic to and from our cell
sites and our switching facilities. Currently, almost all cell sites in the network are co-located, meaning our and
Royal Street’s equipment is located on leased facilities that are owned by third parties who retain the right to lease
the facilities to additional carriers. The switching centers and national operations center provide around-the-clock
monitoring of our network.
Our switches connect to the public switched telephone network through fiber rings leased from third-parties,
which transmit originating and terminating traffic between our equipment and local exchange and long distance
carriers. We also have negotiated interconnection agreements with relevant local exchange carriers, or LECs, in our
service areas.
We use third-party providers for long distance and international services and the majority of our backhaul
services.
Network Technology
Communications between the subscriber wireless device and our network is accomplished by a frequency
management technology, or “air interface protocol.” The FCC has not mandated a universal air interface protocol for
wireless broadband systems. We and Royal Street have deployed 1xRTT CDMA technology, which is one of the
dominant air interface protocols, and are in the process of upgrading our networks in certain metropolitan areas to
LTE. Our and Royal Street’s decision to use CDMA is based on what we believe are several key advantages of
CDMA over other air interface protocols, including higher network capacity, longer handset battery life, fewer