T-Mobile to Make It Cheaper to Make Calls While Abroad

Often, travelers have to pay an extra $100 to their provider to get any cell service abroad. Or they must sign up for a short-term plan with a carrier in the country they are visiting.

T-Mobile US, one of the largest phone carriers in the United States, wants to change that. The company on Wednesday said it was eliminating the charges that a customer normally paid to use their phone number and data service in a foreign country, called roaming fees.

John Legere, T-Mobile’s chief executive, said in an interview that travelers had long been shocked by exorbitant cellphone bills after they traveled, so many people now just leave their phones off.

He said the point of the change was to help the people who would pay $100 for service abroad. But it was also to help “the people who fear turning their phone on.”

T-Mobile customers will be automatically enrolled in the free-roaming agreement on Oct. 31. Those who subscribe to the company’s plan, called Simple Choice, can take their smartphone to a foreign country and pay 20 cents a minute for voice calls. Text messages and data will be unlimited.

The free roaming benefit will apply to about 100 countries, including France, Spain, China, Japan and Russia.

The plan is the latest aggressive move from T-Mobile, which has been on a campaign to disrupt the American wireless industry over the last year. The company has said its goal is to eliminate the things that make people angry with their phone companies.

In March, the company shifted from requiring customers to sign two-year contracts. And in July, the carrier offered an option for customers to upgrade to a new phone after as little as six months, instead of waiting two years. The company also continues to offer unlimited data plans, which AT&T and Verizon Wireless discontinued long ago for new customers.

The changes are working. In August, T-Mobile reported that it had gained 1.1 million customers in the last quarter, its largest growth in four years.

The elimination of roaming fees raises a question: if the customers don’t have to pay the fee, then who will? Mr. Legere said he expected customers to continue joining T-Mobile in droves, which will more than make up for the money that could have been made from charging roaming fees.

“We just changed the game to where our coverage map is now the world,” Mr. Legere said. “Our network is now by far a much bigger coverage area than AT&T and Verizon combined.”

Cheaper iPhone Will Cost More in China

But the cost of the phone — more than $700 in China — will still keep Apple’s phones beyond the reach of most Chinese consumers. And that predicament only underscores what has become increasingly clear in recent months: that Apple’s fortunes in China largely depend not on any phone, but on reaching a deal with China Mobile, the country’s largest cellphone carrier.

On Wednesday, Apple took another step in that partnership, when the Chinese government said that Apple’s phones could run on China Mobile’s new cell network, essentially paving the way for a deal between the companies.

An agreement would instantly give Apple access to China Mobile’s 700 million customers, and reaching it might require Apple to bend on price. China Mobile has been holding out on a deal for years, and it is now positioned to ask for better terms with Apple.

“The only way they’ll have a significantly better time in China over the next 12 months is if they can sign China Mobile,” said Jan Dawson, a telecom analyst for Ovum. “A small percentage would be a large number of new customers for Apple. So it’s even more crucial now that Apple gets that deal done.”

Apple has recently pursued an aggressive strategy for China. For the first time, Apple’s new phones will be released in China at the same time as they are in the United States. Analysts say the new gold color being offered for the higher-end iPhone 5S was probably designed for wealthy Chinese who enjoy flashing smartphones the same way they show off jewelry. And Apple has tailored some software features of its products for the Chinese, including easier setup for Chinese e-mail services.

China’s cellphone market is growing quickly, surpassing the American market last year. But so far, most Chinese consumers are gravitating toward cheap Android smartphones that can be bought for as little as $100 at full price from handset makers like Xiaomi, Huawei and ZTE.

Apple has been left as No. 6 in the Chinese market, and sales of its products in the country were down 4 percent in the second quarter compared with the same period last year. Though Apple is still enormously successful, its profit growth has slowed and its stock price has struggled. On Wednesday, the company’s shares fell more than 5 percent.

In exchange for adding Apple to its lineup, China Mobile may demand that Apple help subsidize the cost of the iPhones. It might ask for a better cut of each iPhone sale. Or it could just ask for a more lax contract, in which it can reduce the prices of the phones. In the United States and some European markets, Apple has forbidden carriers from discounting the price of the iPhone.

“With every passing month, China Mobile is getting stronger and Apple is getting weaker,” said Tero Kuittinen, a mobile analyst for Alekstra. “We have a moment where all of the cards are in China Mobile’s hands.”

When the new iPhones, the 5C and 5S, are released on Sept. 20, they will be available through two other Chinese mobile carriers, China Unicom and China Telecom, which together have more than 400 million subscribers.

Apple said on its Web site that the iPhone 5C, the cheaper model, would start at 4,488 renminbi, or $733, without subsidies from mobile operators. The new flagship iPhone 5S will start at 5,288 renminbi, or $864. That price is more than one-third higher in China than the $650 unsubsidized cost for the iPhone 5S in the United States.

Apple products have always been more expensive in China than in the United States — even though iPhones are actually assembled in China. That is because iPhones sold in China are subject to a 17 percent value-added tax, while those that are exported can be sent abroad tax-free.

The cost in mainland China is also higher than it is in Hong Kong, where there is no value-added tax or sales tax. There, Apple announced a price of 4,688 Hong Kong dollars, or $604, for the iPhone 5C.

Yet even with that 17 percent factored in, Apple appears to be marking up the iPhone 5C substantially in China, potentially giving the company room to maneuver later. Chinese carriers do not generally subsidize the handset price for consumers, but they often discount their monthly bills. So the eventual cost to consumers has plenty of room to come down.

Some analysts said Apple might have announced a high initial price in China to justify eventual price cuts. If an agreement with China Mobile were to come soon, Apple could then reap a marketing benefit by cutting prices just as it gained access to a vast new consumer base.

Ben Bajarin, a technology analyst for Creative Strategies, a consulting firm, said it was possible that China Mobile could trim the cost of the iPhone 5C and use the device to lure customers into paying for more expensive smartphone plans.

“That’s the one thing the iPhone’s been remarkably good at,” he said, “is driving value to the premium data service.”

Eric Pfanner reported from Tokyo.

Eric Pfanner reported from Tokyo.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 13, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the price of the least expensive unsubsidized iPhone 5S in the United States. It is $650, not $550.

Bits Blog: With Big Data, Fail Cheaper, Fail Better

Kim Steele for The New York Times More than big computers or huge databases, diversity of information is at the heart of what is called big data.

There are lots of reasons for the current boom (some would say bubble) in data, including cheap computing, sensors everywhere and lots of new algorithms.

To all of those, perhaps we should add the rising likelihood of failure, both the expensive kind and the cheap kind.

The expensive kind is when your business or employer gets wiped out. That is happening with greater frequency. According to Richard N. Foster of Yale University, the average tenure of a company in the Standard & Poor’s 500 is now about 16 years, down from 60 years in 1959.

“The duration of your working life is now almost certainly greater than the lifespan of a company,” said Alistair Croll, an entrepreneur and author. “That makes everyone more willing to accept that they will be disrupted.” When people know there are reasons to think their business will be blown up by new market developments, he said, they’re more likely to seek data that helps them respond.

Alistair Croll, author of “Lean Analytics.”

Mr. Croll is the author of the book “Lean Analytics,” which is about how companies, and start-ups in particular, can better focus on change by working with lots of different data sources.

More than big computers or huge databases, diversity of information is at the heart of what is called big data. That term may be somewhat hyped, but there is no doubt that analysis of standardized information is becoming the norm in more of our lives, from personal medicine to real-time analytics of big industrial machines.

It is also cheaper to take risks and fail, both for start-ups and corporate divisions. Many costs that existed even a decade ago have fallen sharply. Computer hardware and software are now rented through cloud computing, social media is a proxy for much of marketing and a burgeoning number of business applications are sold cheaply in Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS stores.

“When things like that happen,” Mr. Croll says, “companies focus less on costs, and more on experimentation about what is going to make their original idea work. There is more desire to experiment.”

Experimentation, of course, involves a lot of failure, as failure is where most learning takes place. Data around the failures of others are collected and studied as part of the overall process now. Data on failure is cheaper to create, and cheaper to come by. That is another way of saying that people are more likely to make new and interesting mistakes, instead of the same old ones, which is probably a good thing.

One big result of this failure-driven world, Mr. Croll says, is that organizational leadership is changing toward a more structured learning environment. “In the past, a leader was someone who could get you to do stuff in the absence of information,” he says. “Now it’s the person who can ask the best question about what’s going on, and find an answer.”

Uber, an App That Summons a Car, Plans a Cheaper Service

In San Francisco and New York on Wednesday, Uber will start to give customers the option of choosing a hybrid car at a price that it says will be 10 to 25 percent more than a taxi. That compares with the 40 to 100 percent premium that customers pay for a black town car.

“This is the first big step Uber is taking to go to the masses,” said Travis Kalanick, the company’s chief executive.

Uber, which has raised $43 million from investors since 2011, is one of several start-ups, including Cabulous and Taxi Magic, that are trying to profit by connecting drivers and passengers more efficiently.

Its software tries to predict areas where rides are likely to be in high demand at different times of day. This information appears on a driver’s smartphone so that he can know where to linger and, ideally, pick up customers within minutes of a request for a ride. Uber does not itself provide the cars; it works up with existing for-hire car services that piggyback on its technology and give it a cut of fares.

Uber can come in handy in cities or neighborhoods where cabs are hard to flag down on the street. But cities often have decades-old regulations regarding car services acting as taxis, and officials in some cities, including Washington, say they are concerned about Uber confusing riders or breaking the rules.

Of course, Uber’s convenience comes with a cost. People are paying not just for the service, but also the gas used by the big sedans. That’s where hybrid vehicles will help bring down the price: drivers will spend less time and money fueling up.

The company plans to expand its offering of hybrid cars to other cities in the coming months. Uber is now operating in about a dozen cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, San Diego, Paris and London.

When people use the Uber app in San Francisco and New York, they will be able to choose between a town car and a hybrid. In most cities, the company is also adding the option to hire an S.U.V. for larger groups. Rates will vary from city to city, but in general hybrids will cost 30 to 40 percent less than Uber’s black town cars, according to Scott Munro, an operations manager at Uber.

In San Francisco, for example, the hybrid cars will cost $5 for the base fee, and then $3.25 a mile after that. By contrast, the town cars cost $8 for the base fee and then $4.95 a mile. Taxis in San Francisco cost $3.16 a mile including a tip of 15 percent.

Despite its higher fares, Uber has grown significantly. The company declined to disclose precise numbers, but Mr. Kalanick said it had recorded 20 to 30 percent revenue growth from month to month over the last year, and that there were thousands of cars using Uber’s technology. In San Francisco, 400 drivers are signed up with Uber, and that number is growing all the time, Mr. Munro said.

The company convinced its car-service partners to buy a total of 50 hybrids just for customers coming through Uber — a sign that drivers are making money with the start-up.

Mohamed Mandour, a partner of Uber who owns a car service called Nada Limo in San Francisco, bought a Toyota Prius hybrid for the new program. He said his passengers were interested in taking the hybrid cars, even though they are less roomy and luxurious, because of the lower fares.

Mr. Mandour said that when he drove cabs for nine years, he would make only about $300 on a busy 10-hour shift. But when he worked with Uber, the amount he earned jumped to more than $700 on a good day, he said. “I hope the new idea will work, because then we’ll be taking over the whole Bay Area,” Mr. Mandour said.

The cab commission of the District of Columbia is less thrilled: it is in the midst of a legal tussle with Uber. Ron M. Linton, chairman of the commission, said Uber had begun operating in the city without its approval.

He said that under the commission’s rules, there are limousines, which set a price with passengers in advance, and there are cabs, which have meters that charge by time or distance. He said Uber was breaking the rules by trying to be both. Uber calculates fares by time and distance, and then bills the customers’ credit card.

The commission’s inspectors have been citing Uber’s car-service partners for infractions, Mr. Linton said. The commission is proposing to change the district’s taxi laws to strengthen regulation of sedans like the ones that Uber’s partners use. Mr. Linton said this would allow it to protect consumers from issues like extra fees that they don’t understand.

“There’s room for limos, for taxis and this new concept for sedans,” he said. “We’re trying to make it work for everybody, but we need cooperation. We can’t deal with an organization that sticks its thumb up our nose.”

Mr. Kalanick of Uber said its operations in Washington were completely legal, and that the commission was citing rules that don’t exist. He said the commission wanted to regulate sedans more tightly so that it could control their fares, which would prevent Uber from eventually undercutting cabs.

“They want to keep our prices from going down, which is a very unusual price-fixing scheme,” Mr. Kalanick said. “Essentially they’re trying to protect taxis from competition, from having any viable alternative.”

New York doesn’t seem to have a problem with Uber. Allan Fromberg, a spokesman for the city’s taxi and limousine commission, said that as long as services like Uber conformed to the city’s rules, “we are highly supportive of ways to use technology to enhance service to the riding public.”

In Boston, Uber is shaking things up in other ways. Starting Wednesday, customers there will have the option to request stretch limos. And soon they will be able to summon an ice cream truck.

“You’d have ice cream on demand,” Mr. Kalanick said. “It’s kind of fun. That’s part of how we roll.”

Jenna Wortham contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 3, 2012

An article on Monday about Uber, a company whose app lets users summon a car service, misstated a point made in an e-mail from Allan Fromberg, a spokesman for New York City’s taxi and limousine commission. He wrote that the city supported such services as long as they followed its rules; he did not say that Uber was following them.